REBOUND - Fostering Resilience in Rural Communities

<< Background >>The notion of ‘resilience’ is very much to the fore in public and policy discourse. The European Union has put resilience and innovation at the core of its climate adaptation and zero carbon strategies. The European Green Deal envisages resilient rural communities and farms that contribute to biodiversity and wellbeing. Regional policy, at the EU and member state levels, increasingly emphasises the sustainable development of regional and territorial resilience. Indeed, the current global pandemic has propelled a renewed focus on individual and community-level resilience, which is associated with quality of life and social capital. Citizen and social movements are also advocating resilience, and are embracing initiatives such as Smart Villages as part of multi-pronged and integrated approaches to place-making. Thus, our project seeks to respond to macro- and micro-level imperatives and impetuses towards the promotion of resilience. Specifically, we propose to identify and capture best practices in respect of resilience and to disseminate and promote conducive knowledge capital. << Implementation >>The main activities of the REBOUND Project included: • Development of national and summary reports on the topic of Rural Resilience (RO1) • Design, development and accreditation of a blended learning programme – Certificate in Rural Resilience (Special Purpose Award)• Design, development and maintenance of learning repository (moodle) and mirroring of resources onto project website. • Development and testing of educational materials / resources for the Certificate in Rural Resilience through Learning, Teaching and Training Activities (LTTA 1 and LTTA2) • Recruitment of students and delivery of the blended learning accredited programme. • Development of student monitoring, evaluation and assessment instruments; and collation of student and staff feedback through an Evaluation Report. • Scheduling of regular virtual and transnational project meetings throughout the lifecycle of the REBOUND project. •Disseminating research outputs and key milestones of the REBOUND project to stakeholders through project website; conferences; multiplier events; social media; newsletters etc. • Embedding key deliverables into higher education and VET programmes offered by project partner consortia.