OBJECTIVE: The objective of the project is to generate green entrepreneurship throughout the Spanish rural territory, always on the basis of sustainable rural development, sharing and generating a learning community with rural actors in the partner country.

THEME: The project will address the issue of sustainable entrepreneurship in rural areas.

DESCRIPTION: Among the purposes of COCEDER are: To organize as many activities as necessary to achieve the best training, information and promotion in various fields: social economy, employment and self-employment. Social responsibility (economic, social and environmental). Rehabilitation of the physical surroundings and environment. Agricultural and livestock economics, processing and marketing. Historical-artistic, cultural, linguistic, ethnological and environmental heritage. Crafts, rural tourism, environment, volunteering… and all of this from an equal opportunity perspective. Within the framework of COCEDER’s goals, we propose this project with the aim of providing tools and resources to support the creation of new green projects in rural areas. Training will be adapted and individualized to the nature of the participant’s project. Throughout the process will have advice and support from entities (Rural Development Centers) that are associated with COCEDER and are project incubators and mentors of sustainable entrepreneurship in the territory in different sectors (special employment centers, social inclusion, services, training, education, etc.) Participants will have the opportunity to meet these entities and take advantage of all their knowledge and experience. Likewise, depending on the nature of the participant’s project and taking advantage of the extensive experience of the advisors in the field of entrepreneurship, they will be put in contact with related experiences that will facilitate a network.

This project aims to reach all people settled or intending to undertake in rural areas, under values of environmental sustainability and especially women entrepreneurs.

Our strong point is our experience in entrepreneurship and our implantation throughout the Spanish territory, reaching nine Autonomous Communities with our 23 associated rural development centers and working in more than 443 municipalities in Spain. This project will be carried out in four Autonomous Communities and ten provinces. COCEDER has been committed for years to promote social and sustainable entrepreneurship in rural areas as one of the strategies to reverse the depopulation of the territories.

On the other hand, entrepreneurship is presented for women, especially for young women, as an important way to remain in their places of origin when they return at the end of their studies. This is evidenced by the data that speak of the importance that women entrepreneurs are gaining in the rural economy: 54% of the people who decide to start a business are women, much higher than the percentage in urban environments, which stands at a modest 30%. We will take advantage of this situation with positive discrimination measures for the access of rural women with entrepreneurial ideas to this project.

COCEDER aims to raise awareness of the current situation of many of our villages, to transmit, from the experience that supports us, the need for political, economic and social change that promotes the rural world as an opportunity to live without exclusion. The development of green entrepreneurship skills of the new generations in rural areas is one of the basic pillars to transform this reality of depopulation. This will be the basis of the awareness campaign. COCEDER aims to disseminate the need for entrepreneurship in rural areas as one of the basic pillars to stop the depopulation of our villages.