Animation - Rural Development - Lecture Slides, Slides of Human Development

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Animation for Rural development – a new profession?

Rural development in the years ahead :

the challenge to rural communities

and to professional animators

25 years

1987 European Commission's report "The future of rural society“ … which marked the start of thinking about rural development as a distinct stream of European policy

1991 LEADER

1996 Cork Conference

Now, a wide range of actors and instruments, centred on

• national and regional rural development programmes,
• sub-regional partnerships, LEADER groups etc.

Currently, debate among Member States and in European Parliament about the next round of policy, focused (as before) on Pillar 2 of the CAP, with limited changes

… within the context of EU 2020 – smart, sustainable and inclusive growth

So what for the future?

Development still emphatically needed in many rural

regions, linked where appropriate to towns.

Why?

Rural people entitled to same quality of life as those in

towns

Rural areas will only play full part in cohesion and EU

2020 if :

• Rural economies are stronger + diversified

• Farmers enabled to gain fair return on production,

add value to products or diversify own economy

• Social services + infrastructure strengthened

• Natural resources sustainably managed.

External forces

Financial and economic crisis

• Reducing average incomes, threatening employment, reducing funds of public bodies, forcing people and communities to be more self- reliant, prompting some from cities to retreat to the countryside

Global rise in population, aspirations, call upon resources (land, water, food, minerals, oil)

• so, resources brought from outside Europe more expensive
• resources within Europe more valuable

Rising concern re environmental impact, public health, animal welfare etc

• Loss of biodiversity, use of fossil fuels, carbon emissions

… but much political ambivalence

Rising interest in inclusivity, subsidiarity, self-determination etc.

Sustained and sustainable change

for Euracademy …

rural development is a sustained and

sustainable process of social, economic and

environmental change focused on the well- being of local communities.

Change is not easy for rural communities

• Conservatism
• Lack of self-confidence
• Lack of resources
• Social – isolation/exclusion
• Lack of social capital/trust

The place of the animator

These examples show the wide variety of places where animation can happen

• International organisations
• National authorities
• Local authorities, mayors
• European project teams
• LEADER groups
• Non-government organisations
• National and regional parks
• Foundations

The pattern of organisation and governance is constantly evolving, for example …

Leader after 2013

A compulsory element in national RDPs ? will this stimulate positive and widespread use of Leader approach?

Our hope : Local Action Groups in all the rural sub-regions of Europe which need integrated local development …

• Enabled to operate flexibly as local development agencies
• Delivering all relevant measures within EAFRD, and using resources from other EU and national funds.
• Not constrained by formal boundaries between urban and rural areas
• Operating with approved local development strategies
• Subject to effective monitoring and evaluation, but …
• Largely freed from day-to-day intervention by MAs
• Active in inter-regional + transnational exchanges, and in national and European rural networks.

Skills of the animator

Those who wish to animate rural communities and rural

action will need a variety of skills :

• human empathy
• leadership without personal domination
• communication
• understanding of "folk, work and place”
• understanding of social and organisational structures
• ability to "think globally, and act locally”

Geddes’ advice to young people

“Observe and understand how people live and work --

maybe by sharing in their work and life, from hills down

to the sea and back again …

Get into active survey, always growing out and

extending, of the real world around you … and in

seeking out, and finding out, what your life can best do

to help in that, to be of service to it.”