Author: Waseem Haider

The main outcome of the Slovak pilot “Vision for more attractive rural areas”, including the Action Plan and Roadmap for its implementation were presented and officially launched at the Conference dedicated to the rural women organized on the occasion of the World Rural Women Day in the rural areas of Central Slovakia on 11 March.

It underlined the importance and contribution of rural women to building a better, more sustainable and inclusive future for all. In total 116 people participated in the conference and contributed with their experiences and ideas on how to improve life in rural areas. In parallel, the 13th exhibition of traditional decorative Easter eggs was opened presenting the skillful handcrafts of rural men and women from all around the country. 

PoliRural was presented at the Rural Pact Conference, that took place on 15 and 16 June in Brussels. The event was an excellent opportunity to share PoliRural results achieved so far, and to build new synergies with other projects and initiatives.

The conference was organised by the Commission in partnership with the European Committee of the Regions, the European Economic and Social Committee, the European Parliament, the Presidency of the European Council and the European Rural Parliament.

The Rural Pact conference brought together EU, national, and regional politicians along with local authorities, social and economic stakeholders in a participatory event that reflected the rural vision’s ambition and bottom-up character. It sought to engage participants in designing the governance of the Rural Pact and gather commitments for the achievement of the long-term vision for the EU’s rural areas. Plenary and breakout sessions were alternated to ensure maximum interaction at this event.

The registration is open to participate in PoliRural third Webinar. It will be dedicated to System Dynamic Modelling for enhanced rural planning.

The first System Dynamic Model (SDM) was invented decades ago when the internet was still in its infancy. We have come a long way since then in terms of a tremendous increase in computing power, the availability of data, and ease of access to sophisticated tools and communication platforms. So, it is time to make SDM tools and the explanatory power of the SDM approach more widely available to those involved in policy and regional development.

This is precisely what PoliRural has been doing for the past three years. Our SDM tool is based on a general rural model that contains 8 interconnected modules with over 300 parameters. This general model has been customised to 11 pilot regions, based on discussions with each pilot leadership team. With this tool, rural stakeholders can examine how trends may play out locally under the influence of different drivers of change. They can correct unwanted trends or achieve desired ones by tweaking policy interventions until an optimal mix is reached. This webinar will explain in more detail how the SDM tool was built, how it works, and how it is being used by stakeholders in PoliRural regions to improve rural planning. The event will feature an interactive session to allow participants to ask questions and/or respond to any of the points mentioned in the presentations.

The Webinar will be on 13 June July, 15:00 CET.

The registration is open to participate in PoliRural second Webinar. This Webinar is the second of a series of 4 Webinars and will be dedicated to Semantic Explorer, a text mining tool for Smart Research.

Semantic Explorer, or Semex, is a powerful text analytics tool that works with structured and unstructured data sources to provide insights to policy makers, researchers, foresight practitioners and others who need to make informed decisions while working with large amounts of information under time constraints. A typical foresight workshop, for example, requires a lot of research to prepare briefing notes, background papers, and lists of different kinds e.g. curated reading lists (CRL) with references.

In PoliRural, Semex was used to improve the quality of this preparatory work and the productivity of those responsible for its execution. For example, Semex users can find out what the article, оr a CRL, is about by looking at the system-generated summary, geo-location, keyword frequencies, and sentiment scores associated with different paragraphs and topics – all without having to read the whole thing end to end. This workshop will explain how Semex was built, how it works, as well as its current and future potential based on the experience of some PoliRural pilot regions. The event will feature an interactive session to allow participants to ask questions and/or respond to any of the points mentioned in the presentations.

The Webinar will be on 22 June 2022, 11:00 CET.          

The registration is open to participate in PoliRural first Webinar. This Webinar is a first of a series of 4 Webinars and will be dedicated to Action Oriented Foresight for Rural Development.

Foresight as a discipline has been around for decades, with applications spanning a wide range of industries, from retail to rural development. Most recently, foresight has been used by the European Commission to develop a long-term vision for rural areas up to 2040. While foresight has been gaining in popularity, a common error is to think that foresight and future studies are synonymous. Future studies have their merit and are appropriate in certain contexts, but they are not the same as foresight, which is more action oriented and participatory, rather than purely research based.

This webinar will present the foresight framework used in the PoliRural project as a tool for managing change in rural regions. Participants will be introduced to key concepts and methods underpinning the framework, before learning about preliminary results of its implementation in the region of Monaghan (IE) and Gevgelija-Strumica (NMK). The event will feature an interactive session to allow participants to ask questions and/or respond to any of the points mentioned in the presentations.

The Webinar will be on 13 June 2022, 11:00 CET.