KA1 youth worker training
Agriculture is one of the most important socio-economic activities in many of the countries of European South and a key sector for the development and sustainability of rural areas. During the last decades of the severe economic crises, rural villages have been suffering a dramatic
depopulation, thus also encountering difficulties such as, for instance, territorial imbalances and lack of generational relief. As a result, unemployment in rural areas has mainly affected services and agriculture.
A prosperous agricultural sector can only be developed with the involvement of young people: our aging agricultural community needs ‘new blood’ to make the sector more dynamic and open to the on-going technological transformations. However, young people, young farmers and other new entrants face considerable obstacles activity -among them societal ones- in starting up farming, while the situation is hampered by the prevailing perception that farming constitutes an unattractive or old fashioned occupation, sometimes with inappropriate social protection.
One of the objectives of EU till 2020 is the reinforcement of agriculture and simultaneously the enhancement of young farmers, by providing them the essential know-how that will enable them to get into the entrepreneurship sector. Based on such rationale, ‘Agro-entrepreneurship Accelerator’ comes to complete this boost by providing youth workers with all the information needed in order to support young people to enter the world of agro-entrepreneurship.
The basic idea of the project is the implementation of an Agro-entrepreneurship training, which will constitute the distillate of the participating organizations’ contribution. Inasmuch all the partners have been recognized for the vital role of agriculture education in relation to young people, they have decided to establish an innovative, specialized international training. This training will enable youth workers to gain theoretical and practical knowledge in the field of agriculture. Hence, the fundamental aim of the training is the provision of a contemporary pedagogical material appealing to youth workers, which will consequently operate as the main catalyst in inspiring young people to apply agro-entrepreneurship.
‘Agro-entrepreneurship accelerator’ will not only enrich youth workers knowledge concerning the field but it is also seeking to contribute to the reduction of youth unemployment by boosting rural and regional economy through the creation of new agribusinesses, or the involvement of a greater percentage of young people in the agricultural sector. More specifically, the amplification of education in combination with the creation of an unprecedented strong networking amongst youth workers with strong interest in the sector of agriculture, will definitely help to refresh the economic activities in rural areas, thus aiming to regional development, a fact that provides an additional quality and an added value to the project.
To conclude with, ‘Agro-entrepreneurship accelerator’ project aims at the education of the next generation of entrepreneurs who are concerned with the agricultural ramifications of entrepreneurship. This target will be successfully accomplished through the production of capable influential multipliers, such as civil society organizations and youth workers who will eventually be fully-educated to educate, and therefore to exploit the material derived from the project. More analytically, by the integration of a range of well-designed non-formal methods, ICT tools and educational material in the normal activities of the above-mentioned organizations, the potential agroentrepreneurs will be trained by youth workers to maximize both their entrepreneurial skills and the agricultural know-how, thus identifying those challenges of our times which might enable them to develop solutions and models for sustainable agro-businesses.
Specific objectives of the training as they result from the specially-developed workshop:
– The provision of NFE tools to youth workers/leaders in order to spread awareness about agricultural entrepreneurship;
– The development of specific competences in planning/executing NFE activities targeted at young people, with a focus on youth in rural areas;
– The development of entrepreneurial skills aimed at supporting the growth of a new generation of agricultural entrepreneurs;
– The reinforcement of youth involvement in agriculture;
– To generate a new network, capable to develop knowledge based strategic partnerships concerning agro-entrepreneurship.
The international training course ‘Agro-entrepreneurship Accelerator’ will be hosted in Larnaca by ‘CIP’ from 20 to 26/11/2018 in cooperation with partner organizations from the following 16 countries:
Germany, Greece, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Sweden, Romania, Bulgaria, UK and Spain. Each of the above organizations will be represented by 2 participants.
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