The Social Farming (SF) movement has developed substantially over the last decades in Europe, which means recognising its potential for providing eco-approaches (organic farming) that engage vulnerable individuals (social integration). The concept of SF is not yet present in vocational education and it is not recognised at a government level in many EU countries, however the number of SFs is continuously increasing. SFs and other social institutions will highly benefit from the Revitalist social farming training, especially because it includes an economic viability module and an innovative method called Practical Skills Therapeutic Education (PSTE).Revitalist has taken further the concept of Social Farming by elaborating a new curriculum based on a therapeutic method of education (PSTE), by creating and collecting a pool of background materials and by establishing a network of professionals, and this way responding to several EU regional and local policy needs. The target groups of the new curriculum are social farm employees, social and agricultural professionals.The core method PSTE has been tested and validated by one of our project partners (Ruskin Mill Trust) in the UK for over 20 years, providing social direction for young people with learning difficulties. Their results have been proven, recorded by the physical and mental development of their clients. Furthermore, PSTE also opened a window towards the social inclusion of the clients.We believe that Social Farming represents new potential enterprises for the agricultural sector: any land based initiative that wishes to work organically can attract other sources of income by engaging disadvantaged end-users.To bring it all to life, the project involved 7 organisations that contributed and benefited from this project:Hungarian Quality Compost Association (HU) is a professional organization with extensive experience in education, training development, agricultural practices and project management. Revitalist helped increasing their network connections at a national and international levels.Diverzitás Foundation (HU) has a well-established work practice developed with end-users, stable network connection with the stakeholders. The creation of new Revitalist training program, consisting of developing local social farming initiatives, brought extensive new knowledge into the organization.Ruskin Mill (UK), creator of the PSTE method, designed and delivered training program adapted to different multinational demands within the Revitalist project framework. They also tested the potential of PSTE when working with different types of clients.The Municipality of Tiszasas (HU) and WWOOF (HU) are both situated in socially deprived areas of Hungary and have been over the years building the necessary infrastructures to address the end-users needs. Alongside Diversity Foundation, these three organisations guarantee direct access to the target group; their knowledge is essential to keep the Revitalist training program alive and more importantly, work towards the creation of new SFs to significantly improve the life quality of those in need.University of South Bohemia (CZ) is developing training programs in SF, and they contributed to the project with their economic viability knowledge, which is essential to make SFs viable and sustainable in the long run.Agricoltura Capodarco (IT) is one of the oldest examples of SF in Europe, integrating socially disadvantaged people in the community, in an ethical and ecological way. Their participation in the process was therefore essential, as the partner with the greatest knowledge and practical experience in this topic.The main activity of the project is the elaboration of Social farm mentor training curriculum with methodologies, containing 5 modules: 1. PSTE theory and Genius Loci, 2. PSTE practice, the crafts 3. Characteristics of end-users, 4. Economic viability 5. Adaptation to local circumstances. For the understanding of the PSTE method and the operation of SFs, 3 short-term joint staff trainings have been carried out in the project. To support the Social farm mentor training, educational materials and an Open Education Resource was created on the SF topic, as well as an active, supporting online mentor-network interface.We tested all theory and practice described above in two different pilot-trainings where we used the participants’ feedback to improve the outputs.The Social farm mentor training uses a practice-oriented approach that involves learning handcraft activities that promote cognitive development and a sense of personal achievement, focusing always on the specific needs of each learner. We aspire for forgotten craft activities to be sustainably reinstated in the various locations in order to boost local economies, while guaranteeing the passing on of this cultural heritage to future generations.

Context/background of the project;The Living and Learning on Organic Farms (LLOOF) project is about organic food production, entrepreneurship, volunteering and cultural exchange on farm enterprises. Farm volunteering is practical learning in an informal situation, undertaken in a hands on way. It aims to complement the volunteer's practical residential work experience and informal one-to-one learning offered by host farms in different European countries. It is for these farm volunteers before, during or after their visit to a host organic farm or smallholding. They may want to learn about sustainable diets and lifestyles, more formally about organic food production, or as potential food producers or processors.Objectives;The project has developed and promoted a Learning Guide as an online open educational resource (OER) for adult learners about organic food production, entrepreneurship, volunteering and cultural exchange on farm enterprises, so they can relate this to practical residential work experience and informal learning on a range of small enterprises in different European countries. Number and profile of participating organisations;All the ten partner organisations support, place and educate farm volunteers. They are all members of the Federation of WWOOF Organisations (FoWo) and support the values and principles of WWOOF – Worldwide opportunities on organic farms. Description of undertaken main activities;The project was started by analysing the needs of farm volunteers for learning more about organic farming. The surveyed farm volunteers helped us identify about 2,000 available and popular free online resources that they used. From these the project identified about 100 that would be more widely promoted through the project. The survey also identified videos as a popular media for learning about organic food, farming and lifestyles. So the project developed a YouTube Channel and some sample short videos to encourage more contributions. The survey, as well as a review of learning approaches and an analysis of over 200 farm skill competencies, helped to identify the most appropriate open educational resource website, which was eventually selected as Moodle rather than Canvas. A promotional conference in Italy in September 2015 and a full project launch in Ireland in May 2016 helped to develop and promote the project. The project has been very widely disseminated to the press, media, farm volunteering organisations and the 30,000 members of the 22 European WWOOF organisations.Results and impact attained;The main results were a downloadable guide, an OER website, a promotional website and a YouTube Channel. The free downloadable LLOOF Guide http://lloof.eu/static/guides.html (in 9 languages) introduces the farm volunteers to eleven basic topics ranging from working with hand tools, working with other people and healthy soil to growing organic crops, rearing organic livestock, and setting up your own starter enterprise. Each topic of 5 to 8 pages is only presented as text but has many weblinks to other sites and videos, rather like Wikipedia. The main sections for each topic include Introduction, Background (basic information, approaches and principles), Practice (the practical aspects on the farm), and Across Europe (the wide variety of farming). These are followed by a section on what WWOOF can offer to volunteers and then weblinks to a wide range of Organisations, Networks and Links. The Hands on section, in italic text, gives simple, short activities that could be done on the host farm by the volunteer. Lastly a range of practical skills are included in the Competencies section.The LLOOF Moodle site www.lloof.eu links to both the LLOOF Guide and the LLOOF YouTube Channel. It currently has short courses on farming systems, organic farming, volunteering and a few of the topics covered in the guide. It is hoped that farm volunteers and others will contribute to the course forums, making comments, adding case studies and photos.The LLOOF YouTube Channel http://video.lloof.eu currently has a few short films related to the topics in the Guide. It is hoped that farm volunteers and hosts will add to these films over the next few years demonstrating a range of farm skills and features across Europe. It also has a film introducing the project and a film to encourage volunteers to make short videos. If relevant, longer-term benefits.It will help all those who want to learn more about growing food organically and living more sustainably – an extension to the hands-on practical experience of volunteering, supported by experienced host farmers. However it is particularly written for the 30,000 or so adults (mainly under 30 years old) who volunteer each year to live and learn on organic farms and smallholdings across Europe.