LEADER providing inspiration for future rural entrepreneurs
BIZnet, a Polish LEADER project, has successfully used fun and engaging innovative digital tools to promote youth entrepreneurship.
LEADER has been at the vanguard of efforts to value young people’s potential to improve the current and future prospects of rural communities within the EU. Local Action Groups (LAGs) have long supported community-led action by and for younger rural residents. This includes building social capital by promoting youth entrepreneurship opportunities that can help tackle depopulation pressures and results in rural areas being considered more attractive to younger generations as popular places to live, work and visit.
‘Rural youth as leaders of change’ was the topic of a European Network for Rural Development (ENRD) Projects Brochure published last year. Its interesting content highlights the role of rural youth in providing ideas, inspiration and energy to think up, create and grasp opportunities for stronger, more connected, resilient and prosperous rural areas. CAP-funded projects featured in the publication include showcasing LEADER success stories from Luxembourg and Poland that help young people meet their own aspirations in the rural economy.
Another successful LEADER example from Poland, which was recently published in the ENRD database of Rural Development Programme projects and practice, is the Mykanów area LAG’s BIZnet youth training scheme. This used LEADER’s innovation focus to apply gaming techniques to teach school pupils key start-up skills needed to become a rural entrepreneur. The results of the bottom-up project can be transferred to other communities with an interest in boosting know-how among future rural generations about the basic principles of planning and implementing a business.
BIZnet applied fun and engaging ways to achieve impressive outcomes. The LEADER project relied on a digital business simulation tool and a competition that challenged 300 students from 15 schools to run virtual enterprises. With 18 different industries to choose from, small groups of students set up and ran their own companies, competing against their peers to obtain the highest scores. Further information and contact details about this LEADER success story are available on the ENRD website.