Posted on: 25th February 2020
Erasmus+ Youth Exchange short-project
Many of the European Union’s rural areas face a common challenge, as their capacity to create high-quality, sustainable jobs has fallen behind that of urban areas. Generally, incomes are lower in rural regions than in towns or cities and there are fewer job opportunities (ec.europa.eu). Marginalized youth living in rural areas have a problem getting continued education and good jobs to get ahead in life and contribute to society.
Why “Let’s get rural”
They are facing unemployment & they do not know how to get out of the existing situation. One of the obvious solutions for them is to move to the city and try to get a job there. However, even if they do manage to get one, it is usually low-paying, meaning that they would still be struggling in life, not advancing in terms of personal development and not contributing much
to society. These marginalized youth possess one asset which isn’t being explored to its fullest potential – their familiarity with the rural area that they live in. If they were shown how to capitalize on this asset by starting a business in rural areas, they could create something of a higher value. There’s high demand for certain things in rural areas that local youth could take time to explore and fulfil.
Motivation to change something
Project partners from Malta, Lithuania, Turkey, Portugal, Austria and Italy are all actively working to make the lives of the youth from regions better. The decision to organise the project “Let’s Get Rural” came naturally from seeing the need to equip youth with entrepreneurial skills and tools. Therefore, this youth exchange aims to inspire, motivate and support youth with fewer opportunities to start businesses in rural areas so that they can be self-sufficient and self-reliant. By doing so they could create further jobs for other marginalized youngsters in rural areas, thus creating a snowball effect of lowering unemployment and helping integrate them into society.
The Aim of “Let’s get rural”
To reach this aim, the following objectives have been set:
– introduce youth to the essentials of entrepreneurship in rural areas;
– inspire marginalized youth to create businesses by showing examples of successful businesses in rural areas;
– generate new business ideas that will work well in rural areas of participating countries and will include the local unemployed or underprivileged communities;
– create a spillover effect by inspiring other communities and partner countries to contribute to the established rural businesses or to create new businesses in rural areas themselves.
our goal
To conclude, we seek that the project’s results would help regional youth to be self-reliant and self-sustaining as much as possible with an emphasis on remaining in the rural areas and looking for professional opportunities there.
project duration
January 2020-May2020
supported by
Erasmus+
in collaboration with
CreativeYouth
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