The acquisition of basic digital skills has been identified as one of the principal adults´ training needs to acquire to match the requirements of today´s changing labour markets. This is important particularly in rural areas where the spread of ICT has been lower than in urban areas, therefore rural citizens find more difficulties in order to access ICT training. There are many mobile applications offering great potential to facilitate agricultural, stockbreeding and forestry activities that traditionally require great effort. Applications to locate livestock or monitor pesticide applications on large areas through GPS positioning are just some examples. However, the lack of specialised training of rural population remains as the main factor that hinders the use of ICT in agricultural activities. In this context, Smart Rural aims to create a learning programme on the use of ICT mobile applications for adult farmers in rural areas in order to promote their access to technological innovations that will facilitate their working conditions and social inclusion as ICT represent a way to communicate with the rest of the world and being informed. Smart Rural project is structured in the creation of three Intellectual Outputs covering analysis, training and dissemination, in particular: O1- Study of identified barriers and needs of farmers from rural areas to use mobile applications. Personal interviews and focus groups with farmers will be developed. Once the ICT training needs of farmers have been identified focus groups with relevant stakeholders of the agricultural sector will be conducted to complete and corroborate the previously detected training needs. An individual analysis will be subsequently developed in each partner country to report on the conclusions reached to subsequently develop a transnational study compiling common patterns and conclusions at European level. O2 – Mobile applications action programme for farmers in rural areas. The action programme will represent the main intellectual output of Smart Rural being transferable at European level and including the contents and structure of the training modules devoted to train rural farmers in ICT mobile technologies. The programme will be put into practice in three partner organisations, benefiting between 108 and 135 rural farmers. Lastly, a focus group with the trainers will be conducted to correct possible errors and further improvement. The training programme resulted will be translated into several languages, therefore, promoting its transferability at European level. The different character of the selected organisations and correspondent countries strengthen the transferable aim of this project O3 -Dissemination plan A comprehensive dissemination plan to increase Smart Rural visibility, spread its objectives and results and facilitate networking activities across Europe will be developed. It envisages an on-line strategy with a dedicated website, project image, networking activity and an extensive media coverage. In addition, each partner will organise a multiplier event. Smart Rural will achieve the following results during the project lifetime: • A mobile applications Action programme for rural farmers. • A Transnational study of the ICT and mobile applications needs of farmers from rural areas to facilitate their daily activities. • Four regional analysis on target groups’ needs. • At least 100 interviews with the target group and 8 focus groups with farmers. • Four regional assessment teams (at least 32 members) and 8 focus groups with these teams. • Four multiplier events. • 3 training courses for farmers (at least 108 beneficiaries) and a workshop for trainers. • An effective dissemination strategy, encompassing: - A network of complementary projects, initiatives and /or partners. - One project website and social network profiles. - Full media coverage through the release of press notes and the organisation of press conferences. - Project logo and brochure translated in all partner languages. Smart Rural partnership has been built on the basis of three pillars: technical capacity, communication skills and networking and geographical balance, gathering experienced organisations in in adult learning, ICT training, rural development and as well as wide experience in management of transnational cooperation projects at European Level. The project consortium is formed by public and private institutions from four European countries (France, Austria, Ireland and Spain). In summary, Smart Rural seeks to increase the ICT knowledge of farmers in rural areas, promoting the use of mobile applications for agricultural purposes to raise awareness among rural citizens of the advantages new technologies involve for their daily tasks and further facilitate their information and communication to promote their social integration through lifelong learning.
The project is part of a context in which the rural world in general and farmers in particular feel the need to access ICT tools to improve the management of their work and not to lose the ground of an increasingly digitized market. ICT and mobile applications are almost never present in the annual plans of the training organizations for Farmers. Smart Rural wanted to emphasize the importance of changing this situation and demonstrated that ICT training can help to speed up the process of rural farm modernization and farmer day-to-day management. In this context, Smart Rural has created a training programme on the use of ICT applications for mobile devices for an adult farmer audience, with the aim of promoting their access to digital innovations and demonstrating that ICTs can improve the work and inclusion conditions. This work has been reinforced by transnational cooperation, which has added value to the achievement of the project objectives. Moreover, the project has shown that it is mainly thanks to this cooperation that it has been possible to establish a coherent and quality training plan, based on the experiences of the partners and their know-how. This cooperation was conducted by 5 transnational partners. Four of these organizations work directly with farmers by organizing training actions throughout the year; the fifth partner is a firm specializing in the communication and management of European projects, which worked mainly for dissemination and communication actions. Here is the list: • France (Dordogne Chamber of Agriculture), Project Coordinator • Austria (BEST Institute GmBH), • Ireland (Cork Institute of Technology) • Spain (Instituto Navarro de Tecnologías and Infraestructuras Agroalimentarias S.A) and Desarrollo de Estrategias Exteriores (DEX) Smart Rural has been structured around three main activities (in addition to the administrative and financial management of the project). The first one was the completion of a Transnational Study of Identified Barriers and Demands of Rural Farmers to Use Mobile Applications. Based on this study, the second action was the development of a Transnational Training Programme for this target audience in rural areas and the conduct of training courses. Finally, the third major work-line was the communication of the project, its results and the support of the EU through the Erasmus + Programme. The main result of the project is in line with its objectives: the farmers with whom we tested this project are now aware that ICTs are not something that does not affect them; On the contrary, they understood that mobile applications are tools for managing their daily lives, that they increase productivity, save time and promote access to new working methods and better connection with the world. On the side of the organizations, the project had a significant impact: all of them integrated into their usual training plans for farmers the thematic of ICT and the use of mobile applications. Farmers have been able to break the fear (or mistrust) of the ICT world by having mobile applications that help manage their work and make it much more efficient. In the long term, we believe that the dissemination of the results of this transnational experience will encourage other training organizations to include in the Farmers' Action Plans the training of the “Smart Rural” theme.