How can the challenges of rural areas be overcome with the active participation of local citizens and which strategies are particularly promising? To answer these questions, the German Foundation for Engagement and Volunteering (DSEE) and the German Networking Agency for Rural Areas (DVS) jointly hosted the online event “Strengthening rural engagement together – how does it work?”. 300 participants from local authorities, regional and local action groups as well as from the responsible federal and state ministries accepted the invitation on January 12, 2023.
The core of the online format, which was organized for the first time in cooperation between DVS and DSEE, was the objective of bringing together stakeholders from the LEADER regions and active participants from the “Engagiertes Land” and “Engagierte Stadt” programmes. Best practices were used not only to show how the topics of engagement and volunteering can be structurally strengthened in rural areas, but also to illustrate the positive influence that active citizen participation can have on the development opportunities of regions. After all, tackling the structural challenges in rural and economically weak regions requires the joint commitment of local people.
According to the speakers, it was clear that in rural and structurally weak regions, facilities such as libraries, community buses and swimming pools can usually only be provided on a permanent basis through voluntary work. It is therefore all the more important to develop strategies to meet the challenges of demographic change in order to keep young people in the area and to inspire them to continue existing projects and expand them in the future in order to stop the process of thinning out and migration to suburban areas. In particular, the factors of appreciation and recognition of voluntary work, but also the exchange with other active groups in order to learn from each other and to develop an overarching self-image as a community of interest, can be important building blocks for maintaining and strengthening a community.
In this context, the opportunities arising from the use of LEADER funding for rural regions also represent an important element in establishing such structures or continuing them in a targeted manner. The establishment of regional managers who support, moderate and coordinate local processes or promote joint projects and meeting places that create added value for a village or regional community paves the way for the goal of strengthening rural areas as places worth living in.
As a strong partner for regional development, aconium develops and supports ideas, concepts and funding projects to stimulate rural areas and, in this context, also has a profound portfolio of regional strategy development projects in the LEADER program. For example, aconium GmbH has already organized the entire process of creating a regional development strategy in Saxony-Anhalt and Hesse. The tasks there included taking stock of development needs and potentials, strategic consulting as well as the conceptual and practical implementation of participation processes and the drafting of the development strategy.