Rural Inspiration Awards: nominees

The project aimed to develop a cargo bike delivery service in the town of Burgsteinfurt that would benefit local people, local retailers and the environment. The service enjoyed ever-increasing demand over the project period with the participation of 15 retailers.  

Slow Trips unites partners from six EU Member States to communicate and market innovative tourism products characterised by sustainability and participation and to attract new target groups of tourists who are dissatisfied with superficial sightseeing.  

This pan-Slovenian project is designed to combat the consequences of natural disasters that have affected forests across the country in the last six years. The project includes sustainable measures to restore damaged forests, adapting them to climate change, and is focused on areas that are under the greatest pressure.   

Angelic Gardens (Anielskie Ogrody) is a forward-looking project that aims to create oases of biodiversity in farms and gardens. It shows that a small productive garden on a family farm can, with little effort, be beautiful and provide high quality bio food. Angelic Gardens leads the way in the times of pandemic and climate change with high quality ‘step by step’ educational materials and easy internet communication.  

The ReWI project inspires young people to examine entrepreneurship from the perspective of the circular economy. The project has opened up a wide range of opportunities for young people, resulting in 40 new circular economy enterprises.  

The long-term programme of knowledge transfer in organic farming was set up to improve the competitiveness of organic farming in Estonia and increase local organic food consumption.   

MUNTER integrates objectives for water, soil and flood protection with broader objectives such as climate protection, biodiversity and animal welfare.  

This project combined state-of-the-art sensoring techniques and models with a participatory monitoring process with farmers and water authorities to create a common understanding of the main local challenges and possible solutions to enhance water quality. In addition, the process empowered individual farmers to become equal partners with water authorities as they gained knowledge and access to data. Problems with water management differ between regions, but the process of jointly collecting, learning from and acting on data can be applied across regions.  

The Digitally Visiting project has pioneered digital skill development in Central Finland. The project has demonstrated that there is a large need for local digital support to develop residents’ digital skills, especially in remote rural regions. The project encouraged and guided rural residents to use electronic services and so has contributed to making rural living in Central Finland more appealing.  

HofladenBOX is an online marketplace where customers can order products directly from more than 60 different farmers in the Fürth district.