The aim of this partnership is the creation of a curriculum for rural entrepreneurs. To achieve this goal a cooperative work-style has been chosen, in which every partner contributes certain elements that will finally build up the curriculum.
The curriculum will train farmers and other rural entrepreneurs in “EcoPreneurship”, which will enable them to design, develop, implement, manage and/or innovate concepts of multifunctional agriculture like social farming and other Green Care interventions.
The partnership will focus on three quality-aspects within the curriculum:
- “user approach”: its content will be based on knowledge and competences that have proven most essential in already existing enterprises of this sector;
- “relation based experiential learning” method to speak to the initiative- and will-forces of the learners;
- “modular set-up”: the curriculum has to fit in different existing courses and function as both improvement by modification and innovation by re-development.
The partnership has been working together on this project for about 1,5 years. A good deal of the desired contents and elements already exist and have already been gathered, in order to achieve the objectives of this project. The aim of the project will mainly be the process of evaluating, adjusting and assembling single elements that will lead to the main-objective: a modular curriculum “EcoPreneurship” which is thoroughly implemented in different European countries to complete existing vocational training options.
Relevant national issues are increasing costs of subsistence and maintenance of social/public service and infra-structure, or national budget cuts.By comparing these national issues, the benefit of combining our educational efforts to participate in this development became quite evident. Being connected to the movement of multi-functional agriculture, the partnership has experienced that new concepts and business-models for rural enterprises can have a big counter-effect (directly or in-directly) on de-migration, senescence and other phenomena in rural areas. This results in re-vitalising and ensuring crucial resources for future generations.