<< Background >>The notion of ‘resilience’ is very much to the fore in public and policy discourse. The European Union has put resilience and innovation at the core of its climate adaptation and zero carbon strategies. The European Green Deal envisages resilient rural communities and farms that contribute to biodiversity and wellbeing. Regional policy, at the EU and member state levels, increasingly emphasises the sustainable development of regional and territorial resilience. Indeed, the current global pandemic has propelled a renewed focus on individual and community-level resilience, which is associated with quality of life and social capital. Citizen and social movements are also advocating resilience, and are embracing initiatives such as Smart Villages as part of multi-pronged and integrated approaches to place-making. Thus, our project seeks to respond to macro- and micro-level imperatives and impetuses towards the promotion of resilience. Specifically, we propose to identify and capture innovative practices in respect of resilience and to disseminate and promote conducive knowledge capital.The concept of ‘resilience’ while laudable and much vaunted, can be vague or nebulous. Indeed, the very notion can be open to variable understanding and interpretation, and in some contexts, it has been either mis-used or understood. Therefore, among stakeholders, there is a need for greater clarity and a shared understanding in respect of what resilience means. By working collaboratively with stakeholders (including VET institutions and rural development organisations), we envisage promoting consensus in deriving a shared understanding of, and commitment to, resilience.Resilience is a multi-dimensional concept; it relates to economic, environmental and socio-cultural factors. Its promotion implies that stakeholders anticipate future needs, trends and opportunities and engage in vision-planning and future-proofing exercises. As project leaders and facilitators, we have the capacity to draw on our strengths in vocational training, research and on-the-ground practice in nurturing an integrated (multi-sectoral) approach to understanding and promoting resilience that embeds it within local / territorial development processes and good governance. Our prior expertise in strategic planning and place-making should enable us to work with stakeholders in devising learning formats and didactic tools that are closely related to practice and the development needs and trajectories of rural communities.The sectoral and geographical composition of our partnership lends itself to responding effectively to stakeholder needs. Some of us have worked together on inter-territorial projects in the past, and we can bring our prior learnings to bear on this project. In addition, we comprise education-based and practitioner partners, and among us we have extensive access to living laboratories in which our programme can be piloted and refined. We have the in-house capacity to design digital platforms and infrastructure that respond effectively to identified needs, over the project’s lifecycle, and which will be a legacy for communities.The project's overall impact contributes to the ; fulfilment of specific ERASMUS+ priorities. These include: increased level of digital competence; more active participation in society; improved levels of skills for employability; increased opportunities for professional development; and better understanding of interconnections between formal, non-formal education, vocational training, other forms of learning and labour market respectively.<< Objectives >>The project’s primary aim is:· To devise a practitioner-oriented, workable, robust, reliable and solution-focused capacity-building training programme that captures the merits of resilient communities and enables stakeholders, in a vocational learning environment, to assess, promote, review, tweak and evaluate approaches to resilience promotion across a range of rural area types in Europe.The associated objectives are:· To collate best practice experiences and models (drawing on our pre-development work and networks) in respect of place-based resilience-building;· To devise a resilience measuring, signposting and strategic planning tool that practitioners can utilise in a diverse range of geographical settings;· To engage with practitioners (in vocational education, rural development and civil society settings, among others) in collaboratively co-designing an innovative training and capacity-building training programme that effectively enables them to promote resilience in tandem with place-making;· To refine a digital assessment and learning repository with a series of dimensions and indicators to measure rural community resilience/vibrancy, including citizens’ perceptions and experiences thereof – that can be transferred to diverse contexts and tweaked in line with territorial features and potential; and· To engage with multiple actors (as recommended in the OECD’s Rural 3.0) in transferring project learnings in to practices in planning, land-use, climate adaptation, food production, ecology, economic diversification, service provision, well-being and other dimensions of liveability.These objectives will be realised by the development of a practitioner-led vocational education programme that will promote an understanding of the concept of resilience and its applicability in the territorial development strategies in line with EU policy objectives and local assets and potential.<< Implementation >>The main project results of REBOUND include: RO1 National and summary reports on the state of the art on rural resilience and community well-beingRO2 Development of a training programme syllabus and associated course materials on rural resilience, capacity building and community well-beingRO3 Piloting of training programme and compilation of a trainers guide. Other activities include:Learning, teaching and training activities will take place during the developmental phases of the project (LTT1 - LTT2), when the course materials will be developed and tested by the REBOUND trainers prior to the delivery of the 4 training courses. Local Conferences (E1-E3) – LIT, UL and ADRIMAG will organize and deliver a local conference to audiences (50) drawn from the target groups for the project in which R01, R02 and R03 will be showcased and opportunities provided for hands-on trial and testing of the educational resources. Similarly LDNET will organize and host an online international conference (E4) and provide similar opportunities to at least 80 delegates. Experiential learning is critically important as rural development practitioners / workers need to take the time to get to know individual communities, being open to local specifics and allowing things to develop naturally. Furthermore, VET learners and professionals in the community sector value learning by doing. Therefore, the LTT activities and where possible the local conferences (E1 - E3) will incorporate site visits.<< Results >>The envisaged outcomes will be manifest in respect of the following:· Clarity and consensus – a (more widespread) shared understanding of the concept of resilience and the dimensions thereof. This will include stakeholder acknowledgments of the role of current / present capacity-building (in knowledge and institutional forms) and vocational training, in underpinning future resilience and the ability to withstand shocks;· Promotion of synergies between resilience-building and the promotion of complementary concepts, such as vibrancy, vitality and liveability – informing and feeding into best practices in community development and place-making;· Clearer recognition of the importance of shared responsibilities and co-ownership of resilience-building processes among endogenous and exogenous actors – thus avoiding any downward displacement of responsibilities onto civil society, as has occurred, in some contexts (in the past);· Enhanced and more reflective praxis, as stakeholders (especially practitioners) apply methodological tools that are informed and underpinned by cutting-edge research, knowledge transfers and inter-territorial collaboration – to include the development and refinement of sets of indicators that capture qualitative, qualitative, tangible and intangible dimensions and features of resilience;· Enhanced collaboration between VET providers, practitioners, rural development organisations, civil society and the citizenry – on an inter-territorial scale - in promoting place-making base on the principles and vision of resilient communities, territories and regions;· Policy and practice alignment and fit with EU and UN objectives, including decarbonisation, green growth and smart regions / villages;· Increased knowledge capital in the participating communities and institutions, including the capacity to utilise and adapt our generated digital platform to a diverse range of contexts and the capacity to generate a multiplier effect in respect of the dissemination of best practice;· Increased social capital, including stronger inter-community networking and information sharing; and· Sets of signposts to inform and support best practices in related fields.