SUMMARY

- Background to the project: as shown by the acronym title : "Sustainable Traditions for Entrepeneurs in a Rural Environment", we have developed the concept of making the most of our elder and migrant learners by allowing them to speak and telling everyone what they used to do in the past or in their countries of birth and who lived with very little resources.

All that cultural heritage could be passed down to the other learners so they can turn it into a potential way of life, analyzing what could still be done today, as well as the similarities or differences among country cultures, how all that knowledge could become the essence of a local business. And finally, bearing in mind that our organizations are settled in or near to rural areas that require assistance for promoting them and to maintain their residents who are forced to leave due to the lack of job offers.

- Objectives: the goals of our project are basically developing data bases with information about different local traditions and uses of local plants and products. Those data bases will be actively used by the learners (migrant/young adults and middle-aged) to give them a lease of new life in today´s society, as something to refer to in their daily lives, recognizing the crucial role played by those elderly and migrant citizens who are practically no role in the social life of their local communities, or just used to develop very important jobs such as childcare and lonely elderly people, and even so, these are not very socially rewarded jobs.

- Number-profile of the participants: we have estimated around 60 learners from the different partner organizations will participate. Their profiles are in essence elderly, adult migrants, young adults and middle-aged learners who have already enrolled on any of the activities we offer and new learners who show commitment to implementing the activities planned for this project. We plan for them to become cultural ambassadors.

- Activities: we are planning to develop a scheme of activities distributed over different phases:

First: identifying participant learners.

Second: compilation of data bases and analysis of their contents.

Third: implementation of several workshops to apply the techniques and recipes included in the data bases. Creation of tutorial videos, a blog, compilation of required skills to become an entrepreneur, meetings with public and private institutions that can provide practical information to be taken into account by our trainers and learners for designing a possible business.

- Methodology: it will be collaborative, focusing on the strengths and weaknesses of our learners. Learners will be organized into small or big groups depending on the nature of the activity to be developed. Also, the change of roles between the elderly and migrant learners with the trainers when they show the traditional uses of plants and other products in their local areas will be a very interesting way of encouraging them to develop the skill of empathy. Meaningful learning will be crucial when learners are involved since we will provide a group of activities directly related to their lives.

Our main goals are to give the learners a voice in their local communities, and to find a potential solution to their work situations.

- Results in brief: when developing this project, we are interested in active participation of the learners by compiling traditional information, by participating in the workshops, by developing a growing interest in local traditions passed on from their elderly and migrant companions. We are also interested in active collaboration with local councils as a way of showing other villages and towns a brand-new image of their residents, as active developers of their communities, as people striving to set up businesses, to develop cooperatives in which they can offer local products made with local resources in an environmentally-friendly way.

- Impact: as we have pointed out, our perspectives are based on raising awareness in our local communities about the cultural heritage provided by our learners, and to become part of the solution to the demographic problem that all rural areas face.

- Potential longer terms benefits: the creation of networks among the learner participants is one of the main benefits we hope to achieve. This is one of the reasons why we plan to travel to the countries where the adult education centres of our different partners are based. We consider opportunities to travel abroad are life time experiences that could change and enhance self-awareness in our learners, whereby they discover all their potential skills. Also, the creation of videos (with subtitles in english) showing how to cook certain recipes or how to make a specific range of traditional products will be very useful.