Activating Young Rural Development (ACORN)

The overall objective of ACORN is to develop and implement a new suite of resources including a transferable mechanism for youth inclusive rural development in four European regions during the lifetime of the project. Our ultimate goal is to engage, empower and inspire rural young people to become active citizens, co-creators and implementors of rural development initiatives that affect them and their future.

To achieve our overall objective and goal, each of our implementation work packages has been assigned a SMART specific objective (SSO) linked to the production of our concrete results:

– to conduct desk and field research to explore the challenges and opportunities of engaging youth in sustainable rural community development. WP2 research will lead to the development of a research report and compendium of good practice.

– to upskill and empower rural young people to actively participate in rural community development decision-making processes by designing, developing and disseminating a young rural developer training toolkit and podcast that will be rolled out by 20 youth organisations with 100 young people. 

– to upskill 40 rural development stakeholders about the importance of succession planning in rural community development. 

Activities focus on the development of a practical guide to creating a rural youth assembly. By the end of the project ACORN will create or expand 4 working ACORN Local Rural Youth Assemblies in Roscommon, Idrija, Castile and León and Malta. We will scale and sustain our project mission by providing a mechanism for rural community development stakeholders, especially local government to engage, consult and co-create with rural youth in the long term.