Entrepreneurship in declining rural areas: key learnings

Young Lausitz initiative is a bottom-up grassroots movement of young people from Lausitz, Germany. Their goal is to make their region attractive to young people. They collect ideas from young people and take them to the political level during public discussions in the region. They have launched a “young image” campaign to attract youth to the region and make proud those who are already there.

PIN is a mini-grant (10.000 to 30.000 €) start-up support programme dedicated to youth aged 18-35. What distinguishes PIN is its ongoing, integrated, tailor-made, and grassroots approach to additional side-services: dedicated tutors, professional services, participation to fairs, workshops and networking. The programme has had impressive results: 70% of participants improved their employment status and 57% of NEET youth have become employed.

The Rural Women Challenge is a national Spanish programme that aims to promote female entrepreneurship in rural areas. It facilitates access to information, advice, mentoring and specific training, helping women create or consolidate their own businesses, while supporting the female business community in rural areas to bridge the gender gap in employment and entrepreneurship. A collaboration with banks to help women access capital is also foreseen, as well as a more ambitious and better integrated support to companies during their first years of existence.

The ACORNS programme has been designed to support early-stage female entrepreneurs living in rural Ireland and runs over six months part-time. Based on the conviction that entrepreneurs learn best from each other, the ACORNS initiative is centred around interactive round table sessions that are facilitated by female entrepreneurs, known as ‘Lead Entrepreneurs’, who have started and successfully grown businesses in rural Ireland. Participants note a reduction in psychological isolation and an increase in confidence and motivation.

Fundão is a small municipality in Portugal that has gone through an impressive transformation since 2012 when their development strategy went through a complete rethinking. Today the city has become an integrated ecosystem for innovation and investments.

It hosts an advanced training centre, a business hub, a Digital Innovation Hub, a Fab Lab, a gaming cluster and many other initiatives aimed at revitalising the town. There is a bootcamp for software development and coding classes are offered in all public schools with AI classes to follow shortly. The municipality has also become known as a testbed for smart and sustainable solutions for agriculture

Go Remote was a pilot project with the goal to improve the quality and quantity of remote job offerings for youth. The initiative used modern ICT tools and platforms for engaging events to provide youth the skills needed for remote working as well as to match them with prospective employers.

Digital solutions like “job tinder” and career speed-dating events were carried out. There are plans to scale the pilot by Visas Iespējas, a Latvian platform for youth opportunities that sees over 15 000 visitors a month.