Speak up for a better future!

Project duration: 1.01.2024 - 31.12.2027

Soil protection and gender equality are closely interconnected. Erosion, sealing, pollution from chemicals, and the loss of fertility affect soils worldwide. This endangers food production and the environment. Women are less often involved in decisions regarding soil protection, own less land, and are less able to invest in more sustainable agriculture.

Rural Voices 2030 is an international collaboration of 13 organizations, connecting for systemic change by tackling land degradation and empowering women. We are joining rural youth on a pathway towards sustainable communities that embrace soil health and gender equality. As we learn from each other, we highlight the potential of our rural realities and increase their values together.

Target Group:

Rural Voices 2030 is targeting rural youth in Europe and helps them to get educated on the issues of soil degradation and gender equality. By connecting rural youth from Europe - which are much less targeted by development educational programmes - to peers in the global south, a wider scope is being added to the issues.

Project goals and planned activities:

Rural Voices 2030 aims to develop the most adequate educational approach to engage young people in rural areas and educational multipliers with the topics of soil protection and gender equality, involving them actively in the process of creating this approach. It will be developed through:

• interviews with rural target groups
• collecting case studies about land degradation and its linkages to gender inequality
• collecting best practices in education
• developing social media and video content addressing rural audiences
• dialog events in rural areas with participation of experts and youth from the global south, connected to festivals in rural areas
• developing training material and providing trainings for rural youth, as well as networking sessions, training of trainers and conduction online open courses for educational multiplier
• launching calls for proposal for subgrantees and conducting trainings for them
• organizing network conferences
• conducting media work: infographics, fact sheets and press releases
• organizing advocacy activities, for example extend the message to policy makers on national and EU levels through policy papers

Partner organizations:

• Association Organic Gardens for Education (Slovenia)
• Associated Fund of Andalusian Municipalities for International Solidarity (Spain)
• Buy Responsibly foundation (Poland)
• Comune di Foligno (Italy)
• finep - forum for international development + planning (Germany)
• Hellenic National Youth Council (Greece)
• Hungarian Baptist Aid (Hungary)
• Instituto Marquês de Valle Flôr (Portugal)
• Open Education Centre Foundation (Bulgaria)
• Punto.Sud (Italy)
• Stichting Slow Food Youth Network (Netherlands)
• Strategic Youth Network for Development (Ghana)
• Südwind Verein für Entwicklungspolitik und globale Gerechtigkeit (Austria)

Funding:

The Project “Rural Voices 2030” is co-funded by the European Union. Its contents are the sole responsibility of the project “Rural Voices 2030. Engaging young rural European citizens in a gender responsive approach to soil protection” and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.