Rural areas, challenges and solidarity

What is this course about?

Municipality youth centers , youth organisations and youth councils based in rural areas are often facing many challenges when organising local or international youth projects, in order to support young people from their community, since they are lacking human resources and new fresh ideas.

The European Solidarity Programme is giving many potential opportunities to those organisations and youth workers to support their rural communities. ESC Programme aims to foster solidarity in European society, engaging young people and organisations in accessible and high-quality solidarity activities. It is a way for organisations to address societal challenges and to give young people the opportunity to learn and develop their potential. On the other hand, young people can bring fresh and inspiring ideas to your organisation.

Through this training course we will explore all opportunities that the ESC Programme is bringing to organisations that work in rural communities. The online transnational NET Activity "Rural areas, challenges and solidarity”, organised by the Hellenic National Agency Erasmus+/ Youth & European Solidarity Corps, aims, through its 5 (five) sessions,  to enable participants to develop their knowledge upon the European Solidarity Corps Programme and discover its possibilities for their communities.

Aim: To enable participants to develop their knowledge upon the European Solidarity Corps Programme and discover its possibilities for their rural communities.

Objectives:

• Enable attendees to better understand the European Solidarity Corps Programme and explore its possibilities and benefits in rural areas that exist through it.
• Disseminate the European Solidarity Corps Programme to areas in need, facing challenges
• Discover, collect and share good practises of solidarity actions in Europe and learn more about opportunities given through other programmes and initiatives.
• Support participants to express the challenges they face concerning their area, create an alliance to face them through solidarity and to exchange good practises for resolving them through the Programme

Participants’ profile: This course is for representatives of municipalities in rural areas, youth workers working or wishing to work in rural areas, members of youth councils and representatives of organisations that are active in such communities who are interested in getting engaged to the Programme.

Potential participants can apply as a pair (Municipality officers and youth workers that are working in rural areas) or/and as individuals. In case of applying as a pair each participant should apply individually and indicate in a designated area in the application who they are applying with. 

Timeline - The course will consist of:

a) 5 training sessions on SALTO’s ‘HOP’ Online Learning Platform. Namely: 

Session 1: Welcome to this course

Session 2: Essentials of ESC

Session 3: Examples of ESC projects in rural areas

Session 4: Challenges of rural areas

Session 5: Closing and evaluation session

This is what we call ‘asynchronous’ learning; you will manage the time and pace of undertaking the activities within the above sessions. 

 c) 5 ‘Zoom’ (https://www.zoom.us/) meet-ups. These ‘meetups’ are synchronous; it means, we will be video-conferencing and the timings should be already noted down in your agenda!

Monday 28th of February, 12.00-14.00 CET

Wednesday 2nd of March, 12.00-14.00 CET

Monday 7th of March, 12.00-14.00 CET

Wednesday 9th of March, 12.00-14.00 CET

Monday 14th of March, 12.00-14.00 CET

Recognition of learning: Participants are entitled to receive a Youthpass certificate and will be introduced to the Badge system as a unique way for the recognition of mentors' competences towards their personal development.

Trainers’ team: The team of trainers, Nerijus Kriauciunas,  Olga Kyriakidou and Konstantinos Stergiou will support participants’ learning and training.