Our project was set in the context of the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018 (as well as Plovdiv, which was the European Capital of Culture in Bulgaria in 2019) and the contribution of the Culture Sector to the employment of young people.The project contributed to this main goal of youth employment through a European platform with online tools for youth workers, employment agents and volunteers who work with young people on a daily basis. For this reason, we have identified the need to train youth workers, job brokers and even volunteers to equip them with the tools necessary to initiate and guide activities aimed at young people, such as work workshops and individual counseling. The project involved the exchange of good practice, the implementation of networks at European level to facilitate the work of young people with cultural skills, the training of youth leaders and the creation of a European platform with online tools for youth workers and job brokers to inspire them and contribute to disseminating work on cultural heritage among young people.Promoting work in the field of cultural heritage is important as statistics show that young people are highly motivated to use their energy and creativity to develop work related to European cultural heritage.Together with five partners: INNETICA from Spain; Edu Consulting, z.ú from the Czech Republic; Regional Development Agency with the Business Support Center for Small and Medium Enterprises from Bulgaria; European Grants International Academy S.R.L. from Italy and GURSU BELEDIYESI from Turkey, we achieved our common goals and helped European youth who are also our heritage.

The aim of the project is to give effective tools to young women living in rural areas to take up their lives thanks to specific entrepreneurial training in sustainable development, to foster their employability, socio-educational and personal development. Through the promotion of green thinking, raising awareness of sustainability, promoting the development in rural and/or isolated areas, exchanging good practices, providing expertise and knowledge for women from rural areas, the project will considerably promote the entrepreneurship education and activities amongst young women. As stated in the European Green Deal for the European Union (2019), the future development of the EU must be green and sustainable, or it shouldn’t be at all. Offering young people and particularly young women, tools, to improve their potential in the labour market and, at the same time, find sustainable solutions to support the local development of their rural communities, is a good strategy to have a “greener” Europe. This is also in line with the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals and with what is called for in the UNESCO’s Global Action Programme (GAP) on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Addressing sustainability, development of rural areas and capacity building/training opportunities for young people is the key to make sure that younger generations, even in disadvantaged conditions, can be the real change-makers.In fact, YOU_WEEN! focuses on young women as they suffer from a particularly challenging set of educational barriers, due to cultural, political, social reasons that leave them out of education or job market: nearly 14% of world’s young women are unemployed (UNESCO, 2016) and are considered globally as a vulnerable youth category, having limited knowledge of their civic and political rights, including the capacity to express their political and social views (UN Interpeace).On the other hand, it has been shown by numerous studies and field researches that working with young women becomes particularly effective thanks to the social role played by women since when they have the opportunity and the skills to do it, women take the lead of the social change (UN Womenwatch Organization).YOU_WEEN! objectives are:- train the trainers about instruments for rural development, (social) entrepreneurship, women empowerment, and sustainable ideas- start rural development local grass-roots initiatives lead by young women- Inspire rural communities for agro-economic and social change- Share good practices of rural development and women empowerment in Consortium countries- develop 3 I.O.:1- Set of educational videos2- Virtual Interactive Network and platform3- Exploitation roadmap and guidelines for policy influence- Strengthen Consortium partnership by developing common events and activitiesTherefore, at the end of the project, we’ll have:- 280 young women involved, that will have, as results:- empowered entrepreneurial and managerial skills;- discovered insights and knowledge about different rural life, hidden opportunities and organizational structures (in terms of business and entrepreneurship);- improved communication, interpersonal and foreign language skills;- refined and increased teamwork capacity, social skills, cultural awareness, acceptance of cultural diversity, increased tolerance to others and gender equality;- raised awareness and knowledge about environmental issues and good practices as well as sustainable solutions;- better ICT competences thanks to the use of the platform and the creation of innovative content;- increased self-confidence and self-worthiness;At the end of the project the 56+ Youth workers will have:- improved competences in non-formal training methodologies;- improved communication, interpersonal and foreign language skills;- improved ICT competences;- experience in leading youth groups in sustainable grass-roots projects.The intellectual outputs are all addressed to foster the long-term impact, as they will remain available for further training and bottom-up projects, as well as the Virtual Network that should become a reference for young women all over Europe.Moreover, each community will have trained youth workers that will continue applying the acquired competences with other young women willing to improve their entrepreneurial potential in the framework of sustainable development. At the same time, we hope and seek out that the young women that had participated to the project will continue their path in promoting sustainable development, as well as involving their peers and their communities. The effectiveness of the bottom-up approach is a fundamental pillar for guaranteeing the project sustainability over time, while the tools such as the educational videos will remain at disposal and eventually updated by the youth workers.

"The employment rate of women in rural areas is much lower compared to men’s. In addition to this, people living in rural areas are generally more inclined to leave education or training early, being the “early leavers” 12,2% in rural areas compared with 9,8% in cities, and the highest proportion of people at risk of poverty or social exclusion is recorded in rural areas. Rural areas also have the lowest level of tertiary educational attainment, being the gap between rural areas and cities concerning this indicator around 20 points (all data from Eurostat, February 2017). Generally speaking, those women who choose to remain in rural environments tend to have less qualified levels of training, which provides them lower employability levels, frequently restricting their job to unpaid housekeeping activities (29,8% of women in Spanish rural areas are facing this circumstance). This situation is mainly caused by a lack of equal opportunities between men and women, by a lack of social co-responsibility and by the existence of the “single bread earner” family model. These aspects acquire greater relevance in deeply rural context, where farming is the most important business activity and source of income for the families. Nevertheless, rural areas are experiencing a change and more and more other activities than farming and other values than direct fieldwork are emerging. Connected to those values, there are sub-sectors related to agriculture which should and can be a source of employment for rural women. Within the so-called “multifunctionality” concept, a wide variety of activities related to farming and aiming at diversifying the income sources could be part of the solution of the situation of women in rural areas. These concepts and activities are already recognized by the EU policies, as well as in the ""Report about women and their role in rural areas"" (2016/2204 (INI)). The EU recognises that women “play an important role in preserving the cultural traditions of rural areas, which can contribute to building and consolidating regional identity"" through ""the development of complementary activities…which go beyond the scope of agricultural production, which allows real added value to activities carried out in rural areas”. These multifunctional activities, and especially the development of the direct commercialization of traditional agricultural products and the management of rural/agro-tourism initiatives, may offer job opportunities for women in rural areas in addition to preserving and promoting the cultural heritage of their regions. The general objective of REWARD project is to provide the needed training to woman living in rural areas in order to be able to manage in a professional way those multifunctional activities. The specific objectives are: • To raise the employability of women in rural areas thus reducing their unemployment rate and reducing also the gender-related social exclusion factors. • To reduce the migration flow from rural to urban areas by reducing unemployment and by raising the sustainability of farming-related activities. • To raise awareness about and to promote the cultural heritage related to farming and rural areas. • To foster an entrepreneurial and proactive spirit. • To encourage the diversification of farming through multifunctional activities linked to the local concept, as alternative income generation source. These objectives have been, and will be, reached by providing women living in rural areas training materials that strengthen the competences they need. The main contents of the training system are: - A report about the situation of women in rural areas and their employment opportunities in multifunctional farming activities related to rural cultural heritage; - A set of 17 case studies gathering best practices related to women entrepreneurial initiatives in rural areas linking multifunctional farming activities and rural cultural heritage; - 5 training modules and introductory videos providing the knowledge needed to start an entrepreneurial initiative in a sustainable way. The training materials (in English, French, Spanish, Slovenian, Polish and Czech) are available free of charges on the project training platform (https://learning.reward-erasmus.eu) and are also uploaded on the EPALE resource centre (https://epale.ec.europa.eu/en/resource-centre/content/reward-raising-employability-women-through-entrepreneurial-activities). The project partners are: AGPF (FR): An association representing the interest of French grain producers. COAG (ES) and APF_CR (CR): Farmers associations. OnP (ES): A consulting enterprise specialized in project managing, monitoring, and evaluation. BC Naklo (SI): A public VET provider in rural areas. CDR (PL): A government institution providing training and advisory service in the rural world. ELO (BE): A unique EU federation that represents the interests of the landowners, land and forest managers, and rural entrepreneurs."

"The idea of social agriculture is based on the multifunctional approach to rural development. It is connected with an educational approach, which assumes that combining agriculture and social services on the local level can give benefits in the agriculture, education, health and labor market. This project intended to create a bridge in which training programmes simultaneously offer opportunities to farmers and those who can become partners of the evolution of social agriculture aiming at a real service for schools, families social care and health services. The purpose of the project was to create training materials and platform that give people the skills to increase the uptake of social farming across Europe. Starting from a “learning-by-doing” methodology, typical of the traditional farmers’ heritage, the special programmes were elaborated (programmes based on soft skills, addressed to customers with special needs, and hard skills, such as “gardening and horticulture”, “management of farm animals”, specially trained courtyard animals, “traditional food making” like cheese and bread with traditional recipes, “use of ecologic materials for buildings”, like wood, clay, and straw, “knowledge, cultivation and propagation of herbs for health and food purpose""). All of these training materials, depending on a State-of-the-Art and Training Needs Analysis, performed by the partners in the preparatory phase, were elaborated, discussed, shared, adapted, tested and evaluated. The teaching materials, implemented with 15 case studies (from Belgium, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Spain, and Turkey) are available from an online e-learning platform. The teaching materials, based on managing social agriculture and care farm, were listed according to different target users and level of difficulty and competence, and were based on triad: ""care farm tutor"", ""care farm manager"" and ""care farm social/health educator"". The ""Care Farm Tutor"" module aimed at farmers, farm workers and secondary school students. It aims to give a basic understanding to learners of the day-to-day activities associated with tutoring people on-farm activities in a social or care farm setting. This module corresponds to EQF level 3/4. The ""Care Farm Manager"" module is directed towards farmers who have experience in hosting people on their farms and in being part of teaching activities. It gives these farmers a detailed understanding of planning care fam activities on their farms, with a strong focus on suitability and accessibility for all participants. This module corresponds to EQF level 4/5. The ""Care Farm Social/Health Educator"" module is designed for social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists who have experience in therapeutic help and assistance. This module provides specialist knowledge on planning social or care farm courses as an extra-clinical treatment or intervention. This level is in line with EQF level 5/6. Those three modules with the Summary State-of-the-Art Report, 15 case studies, keywords, bibliography, and self-evaluation test constitute an e-learning platform which was conceived and released as user-friendly, interactive and OER free of charge. The training course is available in six languages (English, Italian, French, Polish, Spanish, and Turkish)The results of the project can thus enable the best impact at European level for social agriculture and connecting different experiences and listing the most valuable case studies. The project creates new opportunities for agricultural entrepreneurs, and capitalise the human resources at risk getting lost in the difficulties of the job market. The teaching materials constituted the full collaboration between the world of agriculture, education and social/health services, with greater involvement and benefits of persons with mental disorders and social problems and their families and gives attractiveness of social farm methodologies targeted to children, youngsters and adults with special needs due to mental disorders and social troubles. The training platform enables circularity of experiences at European level, using linguistic and technological resources as a tool for conveying knowledge and acquiring training experiences, and convergence of themes, contents, and methods that make it possible to use common evaluation parameters of the educational paths of “social farm experts” on a transnational level, according to the EQF recommendation. The project relies on various instruments to spread the results achieved through piloting and monitoring tests performed in all the target countries; participation in events and workshops; social networks presenting the multilingual training products; involvement of education and health institutions, and farmers associations; online management of the system through a portal using the training materials available on the website."

Europe faces huge and urgent challenges of increasing crop productivity whilst reducing use of synthetic fertilisers and nutrient losses. This proposal is to establish a self-sustaining, multi-actor, Thematic Network called “NUTRI-CHECK NET” that builds farm-level adoption of best field-specific nutrient management practices across Europe. In nine countries farmers’ Crop Nutrition Clubs (CNC) will identify and share the nature of their uncertainties about crop nutrition, their challenges and barriers to change. Decision-systems and nutrition tools (including commercial products, services, and recent research outputs) will be assembled by national experts from across Europe, including leading farmers, into a common online NUTRI-CHECK NET platform. CNCs will then evaluate effectiveness of new protocols and tools selected from the a toolbox to meet their main challenges. Thence they will co-create and adopt farm- and field-specific ‘measure-to-manage’ approaches that address their crop nutrition challenge(s). Evaluations of protocols and tools by farmers and experts will address their ease of use, trustworthiness, costs, and benefits. Initial and final evaluations will be shared across the Network to define ‘best practices’, which will be demonstrated and disseminated widely, including through liaison with other relevant Thematic Networks and EIP-AGRI. The toolbox and best practices will be held accessible and improvable in perpetua on EU FarmBook. Widespread adoption of ‘measure-to-manage’ or ‘check-to-change’ approaches to crop nutrition will enhance nutrient recycling and crop productivity, whilst reducing synthetic fertiliser use and nutrient losses across Europe.