Women play a major role in civil society and in the economic growth of rural areas: they are a driving force for their maintenance, conservation and development, both in cultural and socioeconomic terms. They not only contribute to the preservation of traditions but they also represent a considerable proportion of the workforce in the labour market and strengthen the countryside in the face of a constant process of depopulation. The function played by women in help to maintain vibrant communities and viable businesses is crucial for the development and sustainability of the rural areas. Despite their crucial contribution, rural women still face numerous economic, social, cultural and educational challenges. More concretely, the gender gap caused by difficulties accessing the labour market, the unequal treatment as regards employment opportunities, job remuneration and participation in decision-making is wider in rural areas.The access to lifelong learning, the opportunity to validate skills acquired in a non-formal environment, and to re-train and to acquire knowledge, skills and competences that can be used in a dynamically developing labour market are crucial prerequisites for increasing women’s employment and living conditions in rural areas.In this context, the RuralFemmes project seeks the empowerment and support of women through the promotion and improvement of their training and education. The partners will work together to transnationally design, implement and evaluate a training and coaching programme addressed to rural woman workers, based on their own identified needs.The main project result will be a tailor made training and coaching programme addressed to rural women to acquire and foster key skills and competences for their daily work and life. The training experience will allow women workers not only to acquire key competences useful at work and for their daily life, but also some skills and capacities to increase their job opportunities in key rural economic activities, other than “traditional” agriculture. It will structured in two main groups:• Basic transversal skills: to train final beneficiaries in key basic competences (mathematical, digital and entrepreneurial skills, communication, learning to learn, etc.), prioritising to the identified necessities. • Specific technical competences to up skill/reskill women workers in their economic sector of interest: sustainable agriculture, tourism, entrepreneurship. Given that the training contents will be based on the needs analysis carried out at regional level, the programme will emphasize its transnational character, so that it can be applied and transferred to other European countries.From the qualitatively point of view, the project will:• Identify and analyse the main needs and challenges faced by working women in rural areas. Such needs will focus on the field of training, although the social, economic and cultural components will be properly addressed.• Create and implement a training programme based on the analyses carried out at the regional level, in a way that responds to the needs and challenges identified by both the final beneficiaries and other relevant stakeholders.• Highlight, recognize and give viability to the role played by women in both the rural labour market the society; and promote gender equality processes both in training and in the presence of women in the agricultural labor market and in related sectorial associations and networks.• Formulate and propose recommendations that can improve policies related to fostering education and training for rural women and achieving gender equality.RuralFemmes will achieve the following results during the project lifetime:• A personalized training scheme, the RuralFemmes training programme.• A transnational composite analysis on the educational, socio-economic and cultural needs and challenges of women in rural areas.• Four regional analysis on target groups’ needs.• At least 160 interviews with the target group and some focus groups with rural women.• The formation of regional support groups, the women’s support think tanks, composed of relevant stakeholders and women’ representatives in each partner country.• Pilot training courses (at least 48 beneficiaries) in the 4 participating countries.• Creation and update of a project website and connection and interaction in social networks.• A project video.RuralFemmes has been built based on their technical capacities, communication skills, geographical balance and direct contact to the final beneficiaries. The partnership gathers a pool of expertise in adult learning, rural development, entrepreneurship and women support as well as wide experience in management of transnational cooperation projects. The project partnership is composed of relevant institutions from 4 EU countries (France, Ireland, Germany and Spain).

The project is part of a context in which the rural world in general and farmers in particular feel the need to access ICT tools to improve the management of their work and not to lose the ground of an increasingly digitized market. ICT and mobile applications are almost never present in the annual plans of the training organizations for Farmers. Smart Rural wanted to emphasize the importance of changing this situation and demonstrated that ICT training can help to speed up the process of rural farm modernization and farmer day-to-day management.In this context, Smart Rural has created a training programme on the use of ICT applications for mobile devices for an adult farmer audience, with the aim of promoting their access to digital innovations and demonstrating that ICTs can improve the work and inclusion conditions.This work has been reinforced by transnational cooperation, which has added value to the achievement of the project objectives. Moreover, the project has shown that it is mainly thanks to this cooperation that it has been possible to establish a coherent and quality training plan, based on the experiences of the partners and their know-how.This cooperation was conducted by 5 transnational partners. Four of these organizations work directly with farmers by organizing training actions throughout the year; the fifth partner is a firm specializing in the communication and management of European projects, which worked mainly for dissemination and communication actions. Here is the list:• France (Dordogne Chamber of Agriculture), Project Coordinator• Austria (BEST Institute GmBH),• Ireland (Cork Institute of Technology)• Spain (Instituto Navarro de Tecnologías and Infraestructuras Agroalimentarias S.A) and Desarrollo de Estrategias Exteriores (DEX)Smart Rural has been structured around three main activities (in addition to the administrative and financial management of the project). The first one was the completion of a Transnational Study of Identified Barriers and Demands of Rural Farmers to Use Mobile Applications. Based on this study, the second action was the development of a Transnational Training Programme for this target audience in rural areas and the conduct of training courses. Finally, the third major work-line was the communication of the project, its results and the support of the EU through the Erasmus + Programme.The main result of the project is in line with its objectives: the farmers with whom we tested this project are now aware that ICTs are not something that does not affect them; On the contrary, they understood that mobile applications are tools for managing their daily lives, that they increase productivity, save time and promote access to new working methods and better connection with the world. On the side of the organizations, the project had a significant impact: all of them integrated into their usual training plans for farmers the thematic of ICT and the use of mobile applications.Farmers have been able to break the fear (or mistrust) of the ICT world by having mobile applications that help manage their work and make it much more efficient.In the long term, we believe that the dissemination of the results of this transnational experience will encourage other training organizations to include in the Farmers' Action Plans the training of the “Smart Rural” theme.

COCOREADO is a project designed to rebalance the position of the farmer as an individual actor, as a key player in innovative food supply chains and as a supplier for public procurement. Based on the multi-actor approach and a deep understanding of agricultural knowledge and innovation systems (AKIS), the project applies a three-fold approach to maximize impact, relying on ambassadorship, good practices, and a focus on youth. COCOREADO will foster opportunities for young people in rural areas to co-create innovative solutions that overcome current hurdles for farmers and respond to consumer needs, while simultaneously improving the conditions for sustainable public procurement of local and seasonal food. The consortium connects key youth actors including young farmers, college youth, youth movements in an environment that offers support and encouragement to undertake action. A key tool for creating such environment is the COCOREADO Ambassador Training Program. Furthermore, the project involves both academic and close-to-farmers partners across Europe, recognising regional differences and barriers in terms of replicability of good practices and regional opportunities in terms of solutions. Active youth engagement in co-creating solutions remains at the core of the well balanced consortium including three EU-level youth organisations, and is embedded within COCOREADO’s methodologies, thus ensuring that innovative supply chains remain future-proof. COCOREADO starts with the collection of innovative initiatives that enhance the position of the farmers and improve their connection with consumers. Good practices will be assessed for their replicability and translated into educational materials. Furthermore, user-friendly decision support tools with high potential will be made accessible. Communication and dissemination of good practices and tools will focus on farmers, rural communities, policy makers, actors in the food chain such as chefs and local food processors.

4Growth aims to contribute to the uptake of digital and data-driven solutions in agriculture and forestry by (i) documenting the current state-of-play and projecting the future evolution (forecasting and foresight) of the sector, (ii) making insights available to the wider community of decision makers and value chain actors – through the 4Growth Visualisation Platform, (iii) collecting a wide range of ground truth data and identifying key factors or constraints for uptake, and (iv) producing sets of key policy recommendations and best practices to encourage/facilitate further uptake. To successfully fulfill its ambition and carry out the proposed activities, 4Growth brings together a highly-motivated team of 13 partners from 9 EU Member States, with strong proposition and extensive involvement in digital agriculture and forestry activities.