Our RESTART+ aims to help rejuvenate communities in our partner countries that are struggling through unemployment and low rates of innovation. The below article from Farmers Guidance, gives a little preview into just one of the many reasons that our partners decided that this project was so important. The loss of banks and large businesses in rural areas has been devastating to many local communities.
“Rural business owners have been hit hard by disappearing cashpoints and bank closures across the country, as consumer group Which? and the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) reveal 2,500 cashpoints disappeared in the six months to December 2018.”
As this statistic shows, this is a serious problem which is on the increase in many rural communities especially in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Romania and Portugal. Our project will produce the below outputs in order to combat the isolation and lack of innovation in these regions and promote a culture of cultivating growth.
A Restart + Communities’ Toolkit, a practical guide on why and how to set up a Restart + Community Alliance. Restart +Community Alliances: 12 members of our target groups in each of the partner countries will be trained as facilitators of transformative regeneration and long term change. Restart + Communities’ Self-Assessment Tool: an online, interactive tool helping participants to assess their community’ strengths, opportunities and assets, and identify individual learning needs. Restart + Communities Open Educational Resources, comprising a curriculum, trainers’ guide and toolkit of learning materials and resources organized into 6 modules, for leaders who wish to train themselves, or facilitate the training of others. Restart + Communities’ Online Learning Platform, a multilingual, interactive portal enabling direct access to educational resources and skills development activities.