"INTEGRURAL is a strategic partnership (SP) that brings together a public government institution,universities and SMEs dealing with sustainable development in the field of agricultural productionand cultural heritage. It seeks to address the need for educational activities aiming at capacitybuilding and networking in - and between - European rural areas for the promotion of sustainable andintegrative development. Furthermore, with the recent experienc of the lockdown due to COVID-19, it will also explore ways of using digital media for promoting, marketing and even seling products through on-llineapppllications and networks. INTEGRURAL involves training actions for persons acting as entrepreneurs and/or as members ofproducers’ organisations, NGOs and cultural institutions in rural areas. Its thematic scopeencompasses agricultural production, stockbreeding activities, promotion of cultural (immaterial)heritage, and local branding in an integrated approach.The two main objectives of the Strategic Partnership are (1) to set in motion a structured trainingprocess through a three-tier training module (training of trainers, local training actions, jobshadowing), and (2) to build on the training process for the formation of local business clusters.These clusters will create together a ""virtual hub"" that will enable the exchange of information, ofgood practices and know-how, as well as the elaboration of strategies for added-value incentives andlocal branding. The clusters, interlinked in the ""virtual hub"", will serve as focal points for cooperativesolutions and the promotion of innovation in rural areas.INTEGRURAL will contribute to the development of local capacities towards cooperation, creativity,networking, and extroversion. Making use of the local potential (agricultural products, dairy products,organic farm products, heritage assets, natural reserves etc.), along with an intelligent approach totransnational cooperation and information exchange through the uuse of digital tools, INTEGRURAL can create and distributeknowledge, and take rural communities out of seclusion. This, in its turn, can lead to a moreintegrated and sustainable development of these localities, far beyond simple ""growth"" exigencies ofmodern economies.This integrative approach can create meaningful linkages between economic activity, naturalenvironment and cultural heritage, in order to blend innovatively past wisdom and local identity withstate-of-the-art models for social economy and sustainability. In addition, energy-saving solutionsand organic farming can lead to a more rational use of local resources and thus to greater selfsustainability of rural regions.All the above are of crucial importance for rural areas, which try to find their place in the national,European and global socioeconomic context, to train, sustain and enlarge the local workforce, and todevelop capabilities that combine productively tradition and innovation. To this aim, transnationalcooperation is the most important factor. European rurality is at the same time multifaceted and subject to many commonalities, stemmingfrom comparable nation-state politics and from similar productive activities within their geographicalarea. This means that the challenges, which European rural localities have to face are to a largeextent common and have to be addressed transnationally."