re:GREEN

Supporting Rural Entrepreneurs in Creating Sustainable, Circular Businesses

Rural entrepreneurs often face challenges in accessing training and resources to create and adapt sustainable, circular businesses. Limited access to training and exposure to innovative business models due to geographical barriers can create obstacles to creating resilient and sustainable communities. To address these challenges, a new project aims to support rural entrepreneurs in strengthening their businesses and ideas by transferring knowledge related to circular and resource-efficient business models as well as digitalization.

The project seeks to achieve several objectives, including:

Strengthening connections among entrepreneurially minded people in rural areas through collaborative work based on fruitful and complementary exchanges.
Supporting the availability of training around Circular economy (CE) and methodologies/methods suited to a CE approach.
Promoting ‘Green Responsible Entrepreneurship’ (GREntreprenerurship) coupled with digital and entrepreneurial skills.
Empowering entrepreneurs in rural areas to play a role in the creation of more resilient and strong communities.
Empowering relevant stakeholders with tools to give continuance to sustainable practices that can play a role in building community resilience.
Building the knowledge of the participating organizations to explore their different areas of expertise and apply a circular approach to activities.
Supporting individuals from rural areas in the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic and building resilience by integrating digitalization to rural business models.

To achieve all objectives, the project will take a multidisciplinary approach to promote circular economy practices and upskilling pathways. The project will focus on practical adoption of these methods in entrepreneurial activities, as entrepreneurship represents a big opportunity for innovation, which is fundamental for change to occur. The project recognizes the importance of inclusivity and diversity in achieving sustainability and resilience. Therefore, it aims to bridge the gap between rural and urban settings by promoting green responsible entrepreneurship coupled with digital and entrepreneurial skills. This will help to address geographical barriers and limited access to training, thereby improving accessibility and diversifying learning opportunities.

Our project aims to involve a diverse range of participants, including rural entrepreneurs, prospective rural entrepreneurs, supporting organizations, trainers, educators, and staff from diverse socio-cultural backgrounds. We will also engage with different stakeholders and end-users through co-creation and interactive approaches.

The target group of the outreach phase and its Open House Events will be the partner organizations, (prospective) rural entrepreneurs, stakeholders such as organizations working with entrepreneurship and/or working on rural development/circular economy, and other interested individuals (at least 15 per partner). Each partner will conduct an active promotion campaign through suitable means, inviting participants to engage in the project activities and events. If relevant, a sign-up process will be undertaken, in which potential participants will be asked to complete a survey to check their suitability for the objectives of the activity/event.