As globalization continues to interact with the economic and social balances of the territories, many actors are looking for tools and innovative ways to improve the dialogue between education and training systems and skills requirements in the territories. The challenge is to enable VET decision-makers and other actors to reinforce their posture and affirm strong territorial positioning within the European space, integrating global challenges especially human migration and the SDGS. The project aims to find the tools and methods that enable the active listening of the territories and lead to the development of the most strategic competences for the decision makers. Action learning and research methods will be used by partners to identify and enhance fairly quickly their stratégy with the territorial, European and global challenges. by understanding the approach of a territorialised political project, policymakers will be able to prepare to assume responsibility in a territory as an elected or member of a coordination or animation team. Awareness of the European framework and global challenges should facilitate action by expanding the strategy. In the eyes of the partners, this step is the prerequisite for vocational training systems in line with skills needs in the regions, able to respond quickly and qualitatively.
The partners wanted to give a clearer and more active place to vocational training in rural areas in Europe. One of the shared intentions was to focus on the place of young people in the dialogue around the place of vocational training in rural areas, which was a priority for the partners. By relying on collective intelligence and on the monitoring of changes among the project's stakeholders, the idea was to show the transformative side of this type of practice exchange program and to make it a production that could be used in the field. Action research and action training were intended to facilitate the reinvestment of each person's learning in their organization and territory. The resulting capitalization was intended to give an additional dimension to the program by going beyond the case study to better understand the importance of the change underway: awareness, capacity building, action and finally social and political commitment.
The MFRs and their partners share the observation that everywhere in Europe the needs of the actors of the territory are similar. The aim is to maintain and develop a vocational training offer in rural areas in a dynamic relationship with the development and skills needs of the economy and, more broadly, of the territories. The question of the place of young people was raised from the outset by the partners because they are both the key to development for the future but also a voice that is often little heard. This is particularly the case for education issues. This issue of vocational training and youth is often not present in regional development plans, even though human capital is created from the work of those involved in education and vocational training in particular. In this project, dialogue between stakeholders and the use of collective intelligence were intended to facilitate the emergence of collective responses and give vocational training the opportunity to express its potential, especially in rural areas.