We are delighted to be partners in a new strategic partnership project that focuses on rural entrepreneurship as well as empowering youth in this particular field. The project has been funded and supported by the Erasmus+ program. We have just had our first transnational project meeting that was held in Abentheuer, Germany and we have chosen the Retreat Center of Goloka Dhama Verein e.V. partner organization as the venue for our guests’ accommodation and the meeting.
The first Transnational Project Meeting of Rural Entrepreneurship for You(th) project took place in May 2022 in Germany and was focusing on the starting of the project and developing the various tasks and roles of partners in order to achieve the defined project aims and results.
The first meeting was in line with the plans for project implementation as far as the aim and goals of the project are concerned, and we consider that the quality of implementation of the activities that we aimed at during the project meeting was adequate as we successfully reached the goals of the meeting.
The difficulty we encountered was that not all project managers came to the meeting due to various problems they encountered. On one hand, the project managers of Food for Life A.P.S. and Drustvo za Duso organization could not come to the meeting and cancelled their participation due to sickness. Unfortunately, neither the representative of Charitable Foundation “Dobro” of Dnepropetrovsk Region from Ukraine attended the meeting, because of the war situation in her country – in her case the project partners mutually agreed and came to the conclusion that their representative should not take the risk of travelling in wartime, and we dissuaded her from travelling.
Even though the above mentioned partner organizations’ project managers did not come to the meeting, they connected to our programs virtually and in this way equally participated and contributed to the project meeting.
Even though we had several online meetings in the months before the transnational meeting, the on-site, personal meeting gave a great opportunity for the project partners to work closely in person, as well as entirely focus and absorb ourselves in the project goals during the 3 days of the meeting.
The main goals and topics of the meeting in line with the project objectives were the following:
a) discussing project coordination and implementation, budget allocation, discussing and developing project results
b) building project teams and sharing tasks
c) sharing and discussing best methods and good practices from local organisations and communities in connection with the project goals and appointed results
d) planning strategies for preparing and reaching the project results
e) visiting some successful local, rural entrepreneurs to learn about good practices of rural entrepreneurship
f) making preparations for the LTTA meetings
A lot of details were agreed upon personally among the partners during the days of the meeting and the organisation of the first training activity of the project is currently underway. But the most significant outcome was the bond and connection we developed with our partners, as we spent time together and learned a lot from each other how to successfully implement our project.
