Entrepreneurship in declining rural areas

Welcome messages by

• Mr Borja Suarez Pedrosa, President of the Provincial Government (Diputación de Burgos)
• Ms Cristina Ayala Santamaría, Mayor of Burgos City Council (Ayuntamiento de Burgos):.
• Mr José Vicente Orden Santamaría, Director of CEEI-Burgos.
• Ms Patricia Cabrero Vice-chancellor of Isabel I University

Presentation of the Interreg Europe Programme by Jason Martinez, Interreg Europe Joint Secretariat

Keynote speech by Serafin Pazos Vidal, Senior Expert, Rural and Territorial Development at AEIDL (European association for innovation in local development

Panel discussion:

• Serafin Pazos Vidal, Senior Expert, Rural and Territorial Development at AEIDL (European association for innovation in local development
• Pizarro Villanueva, Director of SODEBUR, the Society for the Development of the Province of Burgos
• Florencio Cano Serrano, Deputy Director of Initiatives, National Spanish Directorate General for Policies against Depopulation
• Simone Sasso, Economist and Policy Analyst at the European Commission Joint Research Centre in Sevilla

Group work on posters, focusing on three aspects of entrepreneurship today, and how participants would like to see it in 2040:

• Youth entrepreneurship,
• Female entrepreneurship,
• Use of digital opportunities for entrepreneurship.

Presentations by:

• Tim Berndt, CEO of the Economic Development Agency of the City of Cottbus in Brandenburg, Germany – The Young Lausitz initiative
• Marco Costantino,Youth Policy Unit of Apulia/Puglia Region, Italy, PIN - Pugliesi Innovativi

Group work building on these presentations.

Compilation of main findings from groups.

Presentation by

• Ana Lite Mateo, Deputy Assistant Director General, Deputy Directorate for Female Entrepreneurship, Gender Equality in Companies and Collective Bargaining, Institute of Women, Project Manager, Presentation of the Desafío Mujer Rural initiative
   
• Mary B Walsh, founder and Managing Director of Ire Wel Pallets Ltd., Presentation of the ACORNS programme (Accelerating the Creation Of Rural Nascent Start-ups) designed to support early-stage female entrepreneurs living in rural Ireland

Group work building on these presentations.

Compilation of main findings from groups.

Presentations by: 

• Ricardo Gonçalves from Invest & Startup Fundão, Portugal, on how Fundão has built an ecosystem for digitalization of businesses and how they had been upskilling people (preliminary confirmation for topic and date)
• Gustavs M. Upmanis, Founder of the Latvian Visas Iespējas (All Opportunities) and Darba Tinderis (MatchWork) platforms, on the “Go Remote” digital platform for youth employment, identified by the RuralYouthFuture project.

The presentations will be followed by group discussions.

Collection of lessons learnt from the different groups.

Reflections by selected discussants.

Tour of the University building,
Meeting researchers who work on rural development

Join us for a networking cocktail at  the Abba Hotel to end the day all together. 

During the networking cocktail, a “circulating vernissage” is organised: facilitators of group discussions briefly present outputs based on posters that will have been jointly elaborated.