Description
According to research, a lack of quality job opportunities, poor transport facilities and low levels of entrepreneurship and business skills are some of the reasons behind the high levels of unemployment in rural Slovakia. Joblessness is particularly high amongst women and young people. Fighting the problem of long-term unemployment is a top priority for the Slovak government. The objective of the project is to empower vulnerable groups by increasing employment opportunities in rural areas. Through the project, education and training schemes will be developed for women and young people to help them venture into self-employment or start their own business. A guidance manual to help those setting up or managing a rural small business will be published. The donor project partner - the Royal Norwegian Society for Development (Norgesvel) - will contribute its expertise and many years of experience in advising rural business. It will provide specialist expertise for ‘training the trainers’ and develop the scope for rural tourism through the European Culinary Heritage programme. The main beneficiaries of the project will be women and young people in rural communities.
Summary of project results
The project addressed a problem of a high unemployment rate (regionally 14-20%) in Slovak rural areas.Governmental support programs are focused mostly on existing farmers while people who would launch farming businesses have low-to-no support. This is an issue tackled by the project. Its objectives were to get together such people, to train and motivate them and also to establish a few self-employment or business positions in agriculture and the project objectives were achieved fully. Impacts of the projects are important as far promising farmers in several Slovak countryside got learn that launching of business is complicated but still feasible, it may solve their unemployment and it looks that more farmers and producers are inspired by the project after end of the project. Main outcome consist of trained unemployed (and many of them excluded) people in several Slovak rural regions who are ready to launch their business, in addition good manual of self-employment was published and also general discussion on this topic with involved stakeholders was initialized and is still kept. Main outputs of the project: 78 people trained for business in farming, including Roma and young people, 430 more people participated in trainings partially, 3 new business/self-employments and a few more to be established later in 2015, 1 manual about how to launch a small business in rural area. Beneficiaries were involved mostly by participation in trainings and workshops (33 events in total), focused on various activities in rural areas - fruit growing, cheese making, mil production, rural crafts, rural tourism, marketing, how ti apply for state support, etc. They benefited from well prepared trainings (some of them provided by Slovak top experts) and from technical assistance provided within the project. The donor partnership significantly contributed to quality training syllabus and to identification os the most suitable methodology of the implementation.
Summary of bilateral results
The donor project partner, the Det Kongelige Selskap for Norges Vel (Norgesvel) from Skjetten in Norway is active in sustainable use of culture and nature. It advises rural business for more than 200 years. Its role in the project was to bring to Slovakia a model of employment of people who live in low-employment rural regions. The Norgesvel was involved mostly in training of trainers, providing experts for specific topic of rural enterprising. Direct outcome of partner's participation are well prepared tarinings of rural people, what was the main project activity. The project strengthened a bilateral cooperation creating, international links of consultations and technical assistance. The partnership indirectly contributed to several achievemts - implementation of some proposals in the Turiec district into the Zilinky kraj regional development strategy, very good involvement of low-income people in the project, introducing of new approaches in rural enterprising and more.