Rural areas in the Adriatic-Ionian regions share common socioeconomic and environmental challenges, such as depopulation, brain drain, an ageing population, limited connectivity, restricted access to public infrastructure and services, and a lack of opportunities in policy co-creation and funding. These issues significantly impact rural communities, including citizens and their SMEs. Additionally, the effects of climate change, including more freque
nt extreme weather events, pose serious risks to the resilience and economic stability of these areas.
Unlocking the full potential of rural communities and enhancing their resilience requires empowering them and fostering the development of networks and clusters among partners, regions, and enterprises. By forming a multiregional innovation system, ADRURAL aims to address these pressing challenges.
The ADRURAL project focuses on empowering rural communities by leveraging tested and innovative Smart Solutions and other innovative scenarios and models. Through these community-led innovations, the project will tackle key societal and environmental challenges in rural areas.
ADRURAL adopts a multi-actor approach, fostering collaboration through joint actions among rural stakeholders and governance bodies. A networking strategy will be employed to connect relevant organizations, networks, projects, and initiatives, ensuring active engagement from rural communities and their SMEs, driving societal and economic change.
While regional and local best practices in community-led, social, and business innovations for rural development exist, they are often isolated and lack integration into regional and national policies. This highlights the need for a transnational approach, which ADRURAL aims to provide by enabling rural areas to jointly develop solutions and address shared issues. The project acknowledges the uniqueness of each participating region and combines technology, capacity building, and sustainability efforts to help ADRION rural communities overcome the barriers they face.
Project poster available here.
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