Training course "Go for Rural"

Training course «Go for Rural» included 8 organizations from different parts of Europe and the coordinating organisation was Eurasia Net from France. Main goal of this project was to provide the appropriate tools to support youth initiatives and social innovation taking into consideration the geographical, historical and cultural realities of rural territories.

During the training course, participants exchanged best practices of social enterprises in their countries, exchanges ideas and plans and visited many small local social enterprises such as oil and soap factory, organic food shop, organic farm, another farm that hosts a theater, bread cooking and other workshops, museum of tastes and smells of organic local products as well as a local youth center and municipality.

Here is a text from the Greek participation that summarizes the experience of this program:

“We participated in Erasmus+ project that took place in Forcalquier, France from 2-9 of October. It was a training course about the main issue of social innovation and initiatives for European rural areas. In that project participated 24 people from 8 different countries (Greece, Estonia, Germany, Italy, France, Austria, Latvia and Romania).

We arrived in our destination in Forcalquier at 2/10/2018, a village with around 500 inhabitants near to Marseille. We were welcomed by Vicky and Alex. They took us to our final destination, a camping, close to village. We settled down and we had our first lunch. There, we had the chance to meet other people from the project and chat a bit. Next day, we gathered and we went to MML building for a meeting to learn more about each other by taking part in various activities. After that, we visited the highest point of the village that you could find a small temple and we had our lunch, a salad and a sandwich. In the Evening we had a walk around the village and at night we had the welcoming party. On Thursday morning we went again to the MML and followed a workshop about social entrepreneurship. In the evening, each one of us made traditional food and we also had the chance to taste them next day. In the night we went to concert and we had a great time. Next day we visited a farm and we had the chance to see various animals and have homemade pizza and salad. In the afternoon of the same day we went to an oil factory and learned how it is produced. Monday morning we saw the traditional market of Forcalquier which was full of interesting products of local enterprises.”