<< Background >>The role of rurality in the prosperity of the European Union (EU) is widely acknowledged. Meanwhile, rural areas tend to lose their positions and opportunities in an increasingly urbanizing world. Despite the diversity of rural areas in terms of their socio-economic performances, natural characteristics, and cultural heritage, the majority of them demonstrates intrinsic fragility in social, economic and environmental aspects, and, consequently, different rural areas face common challenges, experience depreciation of their values and underutilization of the opportunities they are able to provide.In the 2016 High Level OECD Seminar “Delivering productivity and competitiveness for rural areas” four “areas of opportunity” emerged: forestry, local foods, tourism, and renewable energy. Forestry is considered to be an integral part of rural development. Beyond providing wood products, healthy, sustainably managed forests are valuable tools for mitigating and combating climate change. They are also locations for important recreational activities, such as appreciation of nature, hiking and mountain biking, and, together with other rural sectors, can produce a variety of local foods. In many EU countries, the local food system is used as part of a regional tourism strategy where specific foods are the focus for visitors who follow a “trail” that leads them from producer to producer. These local foods provide an opportunity to market a region’s food products to a global audience, as well as connecting local farmers to the communities in which they reside. To some, renewable energy is rural energy, because virtually all renewable energy technologies are space-intensive and thus rely upon a rural location. Wind, biodiesel, and photovoltaic technologies now represent the fastest growing energy industries, whereby windfarms require clear sites, biofuels rely on agricultural feed stocks, and solar generation, though somewhat more flexible, is increasingly implemented on open rural land.On the other hand, over the last few years experts on rural development policy have consistently identified out-migration and ageing as key trends affecting investment decisions in rural areas, along with “changes in the rural economic structure” and the “decentralization” process. Thus, rural areas share also common structural vulnerabilities: distance, lack of critical mass and low population density. Furthermore, the recession, the COVID pandemic in combination with the consequences from the ongoing climate changed have put an extra burden to rural entrepreneurs, who are facing increasing complexity and deep uncertainty in their business, exacerbating existing vulnerabilities.Maximizing the opportunities depends on a constellation of factors coming together. If one or two of the elements cannot be achieved, there could be continued stagnation or decline instead of transformation. In other words, no matter how much progress is made towards tapping rural opportunities, if rural vulnerabilities are not addressed, they could render any form of progress shallow. These discussions underscore the importance of exploiting future opportunities in a manner that addresses rural vulnerabilities and current state of the art calls for new strategies and models of rural development to be found and applied so to turn lagging rural areas into resilient rural communities.<< Objectives >>The main objective of the OREN project is to involve agricultural entrepreneurs in an interactive learning programme, specifically designed and addressed to the rural development issues in the COVID era. The partnership will develop an interactive, multi-stakeholder platform that will contain sustainable rural business models, simulation models and mathematical tools, accompanied by managerial courses targeted to agricultural entrepreneurs. The purpose is to train the participants in advanced managerial and business skills. By acquiring such skills, the entrepreneurs will be able to analyse the root causes of successful business scenarios in order to improve their expertise and skills in understanding and modelling potential good practices. More particularly, the OREN objectives are:- Discover insights and emerging patterns regarding rural business development.- Discover and analyze factors (environmental, socio-economic, geographical etc.) that contribute to successful rural businesses.- Analyze the structural elements of rural development, map the relationships that might lead to successful business models, and explore them through simulation with the purpose of identifying potential policies and points of unintended consequences- Develop and promote work-based learning for agricultural entrepreneurs with the purpose of increasing their business skillsIn order to achieve such objectives, the training will provide the involved actors with the skills to design effective business models in diverse settings and the tools (theoretical and technical) to implement them appropriately. Hence, the OREN project aims to:(1) Provide of a better understanding of the modern rural economies, generate knowledge of successful rural business models and identify the factors that can lead to sustainable growth.(2) Provide tools (theoretical and technical) for entrepreneurship in rural areas, a database of business cases and an interactive learning framework.(3) Through the acquiring of advanced business skills, the OREN project aims at stimulating local economic development especially in poor and remote areas.(4) Increase the added value of those businesses and lead to job creation in rural areas (5) Make rural businesses more sustainable and resilient to changes that hinder their development<< Implementation >>The OREN project will address such issue by implementing the following approach:(1) establish a multi-stakeholder interaction, as a valuable strategy to enhance the modern rural economy opportunities,(2) build and transfer a “dynamic capability”, which can help rural actors to engage in multistakeholder interaction for sustainability and maintain their profits at the same time.(3) Increase the business skills of rural entrepreneurs by promoting continued education and training in advanced aspects of business management despite the restriction posed by the COVID pandemic.<< Results >>Measurable results will be:- (R1) a survey of the most promising community-based rural business models, analyzing their critical success factors, delivered at month 7;- (R2) a report on the fundamental dynamics explaining the community-based approach delivered at month 15, elaborated through a collaborative model building approach, addressing: environments and social dynamics, pattern emergence, triggers and catalyzers, risks mapping;- (R3) a suite of simulation models and an interactive learning environment, developed and released at month 19;- (O4) a set of 5 complementary courses, with related course materials, to be provided together and with the support of the decision support system; these will be ready at month 16 and will address the following topics: (1) Legislative skills (EU agenda on rural development); (2) Technical skills; (3) Methodological skills (mathematical modeling; rural business innovation); (4) Sociological skills; (5) Entrepreneurial skills. Courses will be produced in English and all the elaborated material will be translated the partners’ languages too. These courses will be held fully online. It is the purpose of the partnership to engage at least 10 participants from each country.- (R4) guidelines with respect to rural development strategies, delivered at month 24;- (R5) recommendations based on lesson learnt during the project executions, delivered at month 24 and shared during the final conference (E4).These outputs will be disseminated both trough online channels and by means of two conferences (multiplier events). The first (E1), targeting civil society and agricultural organizations beyond the partnership, to share the former results of the project and gain further insights useful for tuning both the models and the courses’ materials; it will take place at month 19.Three final conference (E2-E4), will be held during the last months of the project with the purpose of disseminating the project results to relevant stakeholders and rural communities at the partner countries and the EU.

dRural overall goal it to co-develop and implement a digital solution that delivers multiple services to rural citizens while creating opportunities economic growth and quality of life improvements. Then, to ensure the successful exploitation and sustainability after the project’s lifetime and its replication in other European territories. As such, our aspiration is to become the service marketplace of reference for European rural areas. dRural will build a service network for rural areas and communities based on four rural regions of Europe, namely: Extremadura (ES), Dubrovnik-Neretva County (HR) and Region Gelderland Midden (NL). Each of these settings are called regional demonstrators. The solution building will follow agile methodologies and ensure end-users co-creation and validation in each regional demonstrator. Besides, dRural will be developed with a 'by-design' approach to ethics, privacy, and data protection. An internet coverage optimization in the demonstrators will be done to guarantee a smooth deployment. Then, the solution will be set up in each region, guaranteeing its personalization and customization to the regional needs, and integrating with the local service providers. In parallel, an ecosystem of relevant players surrounding the dRural solution will be created in each region by identifying the key stakeholders, current problems and designing a value proposition for each of them. The ecosystem building exercise will be supported by an open call in each demonstrator leveraging financial support to third parties to incentivize the solution take up and expand the ecosystem of players involved. This will offer opportunities for entrepreneurs by promoting new market openings allowing also smaller and newer players to capture value. An evaluation of usage and impacts will be performed to ensure on-going support in the region after the project completionend.

<< Background >>The project, 'PROTECT: PROmoting The prevention and Elimination of workplaCe mobbing and harrasmenT' is a 2-year project involving eight (8) partners form Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Belgium and Romania.The protection of rights, safety, wellbeing of women workers is a priority of the EU Institutions. Gender related issues are of high importance for the EU in terms of legitimacy and equality: -women represent more than the half of Europe' s citizenry. In 2018, women's gross hourly earnings were on average 14.4 % below those of men in the European Union (EU-27) and 15.3% in the euro area (EA-19) (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Gender_statistics#Labour_market), - women were also hit more by the Covid -19 pandemic, as they are again, over-represented in the first line of duty against it, thus more exposed to infection, resulting in long term unpaid care work, while the restriction measures put also more domestic work on them,-while researches have showed that women were over-represented as victims of mobbing and harassment at work. (https://www.frontiersin.org/Zapf, 2020 and Salin and Notelaers 2018). The consequences of being bullied have been studied with 140,000 participants and showed robust evidence for negative consequences of workplace bullying and harassment, such as affecting mental health. Mobbing and harassment is usually directed towards young women and is the most extreme, yet persistent, form of gender-based discrimination; whereas some 90 % of victims are of sexual harassment, up to 55% of women have been sexually harassed in the EU; The EU is in need of a strong Social European Pillar to address gender inequalities. Its basic principle is equality of men and women, including participation in the labour market, conditions of employment and career progression, with a special focus on marginalised and vulnerable groups, such as women with migrant background, members of minorities and single parents. This reality urge for new discussion, researches and strategies involving women and education of training professionals. PROTECT partnership is keen on addressing the above problems and discrimination between men and women: tackling effectively the gaps in employment.By focusing on the workplace sector, the PROTECT action will set ambitious, but tangible targets so as to contribute to a more inclusive, attractive and ultimately equal labour market across Europe via sequential steps that will deal with the construction of national and in turn transnational VET systems that promote equal opportunities on the basis of inclusive and accessible programs. PROTECT aims at increasing the flexibility of opportunities in VET for both company leaders and the educational staff in efforts to educate them and raise awareness about the different forms that mobbing and harassment can take within the local, national and transnational labour markets, its consequences and the effective ways to prevent and combat it, whilst inform and protect female workers from mobbing, increase reporting of such incidents and raise awareness about violence and intimidation in the workplace.Addressing digital transformation: while learning materials and digital media devices are continuing to grow, there is no parallel upskilling for VET providers to be able to benefit from these new technology-based opportunities. With this in mind, one of the main project priorities is to build the skills of (1) VET professionals and (2) women workers and employers to ensure that they have the confidence and digital readiness for establishing and using effectively anti-bullying prevention and reporting tools in online environments.The partnership also needs relevant online training material and methodologies both for their learners and clients and staff members in order to be able to compete other organisations in terms of innovation but also to adopt a anti-mobbing and harassment policy for a more equality.<< Objectives >>Keywords: leadership, organisational change, workplace relationships, workplace bullying, mobbing behaviour, violence, prevention, sensitisation, gender equality, inclusionThis project addresses a ground-breaking field that although has been a hidden issue for many years now, came to the surface only recently under the term “mobbing”. Workplace bullying/ mobbing are secretive, targeted, and widespread forms of abuse in the workplace (European Foundation, 2002). This behaviour is ’designed to ostracise, isolate, undermine, and eliminate the person(s) being targeted’. For reasons as yet unknown, this behaviour appears to occur more frequently in the social service, health, social, care and educational sectors, where women are over-represented: the EU average is revealing in this regard (European Institute for Gender Equality).A global estimation of the Bureau of Nations Affairs even claims that the lost productivity due to mobbing equals an amount of five to six billion dollar a year. The organisation concerned also have to bear the costs caused by victims who are solely absent from work because they are afraid of mobbing. According to a study 60 % of the employees even leave the company due to bullying at the workplace.(Report/002/73/EC). As for the partner countries, the phenomenon of harassment or mobbing in the workplace have not been scientifically studied, therefore PROTECT aims at delivering an international desk-top and field research on the topic. The partners aim at bringing non- violent practises and solutions to the labour market through equipping VET professionals, women workers and employers with important skills and tools through capacity building programs, that are crucial for personal and professional life and help establish new work-based routines. Therefore, organisations, peoples' groups and families are expected to become more resilient, connected and all these result in more peaceful and inclusive communities and workplaces, as a whole. All the above lead to the creation of an international European professional network that connects education providers, local businesses, individuals and families, plus all target groups with the labour market.While crafting the recovery and resilience strategies as a respond to mitigate the post -pandemic inequalities in the EU and addressing the above, PROTECT’ s main objectives are to empower its target groups women workers, employers/ managers and VET professionals and:•prevent mobbing and harassment through comprehensive codes of conduct in the workplace,•train VET professionals on preventing and managing work-related violence•educate employers/ managers and companies regarding the adaptation of anti-mobbing and anti-harassment policy,•raise the awareness of female workers about their rights and support options in case of mobbing and harassment, including reporting,.The project is to support the above target groups, however it also welcomes and benefits professionals from the arena of HR, law and mediation internationally.<< Implementation >>During the project life-cycle PROTECT partners are going to implement different activities, focusing on its target groups and the partnership's need. There are activities related directly to the project' s five (5) Results: desk-top and field research, training and reporting material development, training design and capacity building program delivery, workshops, plus three (3) transnational meetings for more effective cooperation and six (6) multiplier events with 270 participants to ensure better dissemination of the project results an outcomes. Specifically, the linkage between objectives/results and activities follows a sequential approach, as presented below:Result 01 involves the development of the Anti-mobbing and Anti-Harassment Code of Conduct and all necessary preparatory activities for identifying the exact needs of both target groups. Once those needs are identified, they will feed the implementation of the next results, which involve the design of the solution (reporting tool, handbook, trainings, workshops).Result O2 involves the design and development of the Reporting Tool for women workers and information on digital usage. This will be accomplished by capitalising on the findings of the previous result while it will be an important part of project outputs (training content, capacity building program, digital information & sensitisation material, online platform).Result 03 involves the content development for the training of VET professionals, and will be the foundation (together with R01, R02) of the next two results.Result O4 involves the pilot application of the results of R01, RO2, R03, (i.e. pilot capacity building program for VET educators) and will lad to the implementation of the next result, where the trained VET professionals will hold workshops for company leaders. This result involves the capitalisation of all project outputs in a way that will facilitate their promotion and dissemination. In this way, together with the foreseen supporting multiplier events (info days, final conference) will lead to the promotion of all project results to various stakeholders.Consequently, all results are interconnected, with each of them feeding the next one, while the achievement of all foreseen project results is feasible and can be broken down to different results.<< Results >>Main results, as expected:R01 Anti-Mobbing and Anti-Harassment Code of Conduct (MWHCC) for local businesses R02 Reporting Tool for Female Worker about Mobbing and Harassment R03: E-Handbook for Mobbing and Harassment Prevention Training for VET professionalsR04: Training of VET professionalsR05 Local capacity building workshops for managers/ employersplus, activities and tools to be developed during the creation and implementation of the above:-An open source, barrier-free, tailor made, web-based e-learning platform.-A collection of practises and tools at national, EU and global level regarding the the combatting of mobbing and harassment.-A multinational and multilingual bibliography to be explored, and best practises to be gathered from all partner countries of the partnership.-Discussion with female workers to investigate their knowledge and attitude towards mobbing/ workplace harassment.-Capacity building material for the learning process of employers and representatives of local companies.-Online learning resources and tools for use by interested stakeholders, professionals and labour market representatives.-A collection of statistics relevant to the PROTECT’s topic and target groups.-Group meetings for informing relevant stakeholders and companies/ employers about the products.-A sensitisation social media campaign targeted to female workers about mobbing and harassment.-Dissemination Strategy and tools about the possibility of reporting mobbing and ways to prevent victimisation.-Advanced English language practise and knowledge for all participants, as the main working language of the project is English.A wide scale of results, related to the management, dissemination and exploitation, and quality assurance processes, are expected, too. These will ensure that the project and its objectives are clear and of high quality, they are disseminated and reach the targeted people in all countries.Project virtual meetingsTransnational meetings: three meetings in Spain, Greece and Italy.Training sessionsMultiplier dissemination events in six organisations with 40 participants and a closing event in Spain with 70 participants.Project Tasks PlanReports for interim and final evaluationPartner agreementsNewslettersStakeholders database Dissemination and Sustainability Plan Quality Assurance PlanSocial Media PlatformsPlus, a complex project website gathering all the outputs, serving as a main channel for both the partners and other stakeholders during the project life cycle and beyond will be built. It will have details about the participating partners, a description about the project' s objectives and aims, details about the transnational meetings, the multiplier event, the conditions of participating in the piloting/ training and the research - scientific background. It will be established for communication, dissemination and exploitation of the results. It will contain also the links to the project's training platform and to other open-resource deliverables of the project.- Improved policies and internal organisational strategies against mobbing. - Increased capacity among local companies and employers regarding effective ways to precent and combat mobbing. - Improved reporting methods and tools for mobbing incidents in the partner countries and at EU level. - Increased awareness among female workers about the possibility of becoming a victim of mobbing/ harassment, the reporting and support optionsA multi-disciplinary research leading to a Code of Conduct on workplace violence will be delivered, as a scientific foundation of the capacity building program. The document will focus on the theory framing the definitions of workplace violence, harassment and mobbing and the management of bullying at work. The document, having as a basis the theory mention above and the shared experiences of the participants, will give the direction and idea of the standards for a reporting system.

Provided above

SMEthod is a research project aimed at delivering an improved methodology of identifying SME’s pathways to innovation and of segmenting innovating SMEs in order to determine optimal targeting and timing of support measures allocated by innovation agencies and other institutions. A complementary goal is to create a decision support tool (DST) ) which will be devolved in cooperation with the relevant stakeholders who implement innovation policies and by compiling the complex SME innovativeness determinants will offer them a flexible evaluation tool. Broad dissemination activities are also planned to reach innovation stakeholders, innovation and regional development agencies, ministries, etc. The SMEthod methodology will consider important factors that are likely to influence companies and the societal impact they create. In particular, enterprise lifecycle, industrial sectors, regional characteristics, and innovation cycles will be scrutinized. New segmenting criteria for innovation support policies will be prepared and specific variables will be determined and weighted in order to assure usability of the methodology. The holistic character of the project will be assured by proposing a more efficient allocation of appropriate pro-innovation measures. Most common and relevant methodologies of segmenting SMEs for the purpose of innovation support will be evaluated as well. Furthermore, efficiency of selected methods and techniques will be assessed. Conclusions from the research will be merged to deliver a final product of the project – a holistic methodology and the DST based on it. The project’s impact will be a better understanding of innovation dynamics and potentials in SMEs and of their efficient segmentation. New knowledge will be created on the effectiveness of innovation policies and most popular measures. Better targeting different instruments toward most promising SMEs will be possible thanks to evaluative analyses and new segmenting criteria.