BACKGROUND/CONTEXT In the last decades, European policies enabling the European Social Model, supported by EU Structural Funds (ERDF, CF, ESF), managed to increase cohesion among EU countries, whilst internal asymmetries are more and more evident (Giddens, 2006). Young people are at the very center of the process: overall, their mobility-related choices result in a phenomenon known as drain brain, due to the attractivity of urban/metropolitan areas with respect to inner ones in terms of access to services, quality of life and job opportunities. In Portugal, the divide is particularly visible: 70% of the population lives by the coast (0-50km), as made evident by the two metropolitan areas of the nation, Lisbon and Porto, which account together for almost half of the national population (45% of Continental Portugal, around 4.8 million). ANIMAR, fearing how a lack of generational turnover in marginal areas would negatively affect the capacity of the social economy to support local development, is willing to build a cross-sectoral partnership aiming to elaborate a common strategy with international actors who share the same vision. This is an open call for public institutions and private organizations either working with sustainable tourism, job creation, or youth participation and training: local and regional authorities, schools and universities; networks of NGOs and youth organizations; social enterprises and cooperatives; businesses related to tourism and territorial promotion. VISION Local development needs time to prove its impacts and must therefore be attractive in order to regenerate its forces: in concrete, we need to create opportunities for young people to stay in low-density areas. The intuition is to take advantage of two trends of the youth contemporary world: on the one hand, young people have been nourishing a new sensibility, proving their willingness to be actors of positive change toward a more sustainable, inclusive and responsible way of living; on the other hand, eased access to mobility is making it one of the most attractive and effective educational and learning tool. As a consequence, we aim to re-imagine mobility from a drain-braining escape to an experience of connection and exchange, promoting the value of solidarity as a driver of our actions and fostering the transition from individualism to cooperation. What we propose as a solution is thus Solidarity Tourism, able to merge the experiential attractivity of mobility with the inner responsibility toward our common home, where nobody is nowhere left behind. Lastly, the internationalization achieved through solidarity tourism will represent an enrichment for local communities in terms of openness and European values, raising awareness on sustainable living and developing EU citizenship. NEEDS AND TARGET The overall challenge is to elaborate a virtuous and scalable solution able to fight brain drain by exploiting a new kind of mobility: solidarity tourism. Consequently, while the final beneficiary is youth, the target of the project are youth workers, either belonging to the public sector or to social economy organizations. Their need is to elaborate a methodology in order to attract and empower young people with key competences enabling them to engage with their territory. Our proposal focuses on solidarity tourism, meant as an opportunity to create youth commitment and active participation at local level. RESULTS, DISSEMINATION AND IMPACTS
In order to reduce inequalities and contribute to greater territorial cohesion, we suggest that it is possible to create sustainable jobs that value local resources and be seen as an opportunity for young people to settle in rural areas and can have a stable life. Taking into account the difficulties described, we propose solidarity tourism, with a sustainable basis, as an alternative/option in view of the precarious situation of local communities that cannot meet the needs felt by the young society. Our primary objective with this project is to sensitize young people to this theme, showing that it is possible to be active agents of change in their territories through the development of this concept of solidarity tourism that presupposes above all respect for communities and the valorization of resources and heritage in a sustainable way. The adoption and introduction of this concept in the territories will bring employment opportunities to young people reducing their need for mobilization. The expected economic stability of the working population will lead to its settlement in the most depopulated territories, contributing to its development and growth.
This project aims to offer an alternative to one of many challenges of what is the complex European demographic reality today. This reality translates into the desertification of rural areas and a widespread migration of the young working population to the urban/metropolitan areas of their countries - in order to find more and better job and qualification opportunities - contributing to the territorial disparity and growing socio-economic inequalities of local communities. We add to this problem, the lack of civic participation of young Europeans in their communities. This decrease in interest and contributing to the development of their local communities has been worrying the European Union. The mobilisation of young people happens essentially because there are no alternatives in their territories that enhance their fixation, consequently, often creating precarious employability or unemployment. Precariousness is one of the great enemies for the construction of a stable financial life, such conditions inevitably indeternaize young people from being participatory from a local perspective, because it forces them to move away from the micro context.