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Training-the-trainers for ecological small scale production
Start date: Sep 1, 2014, End date: Aug 31, 2017 PROJECT  FINISHED 

The ECO-MOTIVE project is aimed at providing training tools for disadvantaged and unemployed adults to provide sustainable development solutions to entrenched rural poverty. The roots of poverty and social disadvantage are complex, and there is no wholesale solution within the scope of any single project, but we believe that one starting point for building opportunities for disadvantaged, low-skilled rural people is to explore individual human development (both life and employment skills) in connection with agriculture-based training opportunities. The ecological approach offers multiple benefits, including a recognition of the central importance of the social context of agriculture and its resource-efficient nature that complies with the long-term strategic goal of the sustainable natural resource management. A number of local government initiatives have already started up over the last few years, aimed at developing skills and knowledge appropriate for rural areas in basic agricultural areas. At the same time community employment programmes („Közmunka program”) have begun, in an attempt to address entrenched rural unemployment. Unfortunately there is a lack of capacity at local government level that justifies the need for employment trainings, reskilling programmes and human development resources on which our project focuses. The ECO-MOTIVE project will provide the training background, including technical knowledge and skills coupled with knowledge transfer methodology and social sensitization and motivation practices to provide user groups (primarily local authorities, and their programme staff) with course materials and training modules for trainers (practitioners, unemployed adults with an agricultural background, or with working experience in agriculture) by preparing capacity to train trainers of disadvantaged/ unemployed/low skilled adults (end-users) of rural areas in the field of small-scale ecological production. In order to facilitate the training of trainers we will prepare the following 6 modules, which together will constitute the main intellectual output of our project: social sensitivity skills and motivation, ecological small-scale farming (introduction), ecological small animal husbandry, ecological vegetable production, ecological fruit production and direct local marketing of ecological produce. Each module will include applied pedagogical methods and will be submitted for accreditation as distinct modules, but together will form the complex training-the-trainers curriculum for ecological small scale production. The curriculum will be accompanied by training-the-trainers teaching materials that will facilitate the teaching work of trainers in ecological farming. The 6 distinct sections (corresponding to the curriculum modules) of the teaching material will provide professional knowledge based on the collection of well-established good practices appropriate for teaching approached in a holistic way. The end-users course materials will support the learning of end-users during trainings in ecological small-scale production facilitated by trained trainers. The content of the end-users targeted course materials will be closely linked to the accompanying training-the-trainers teaching material. The end-user course materials, which will be rich in graphic illustration for the purpose of easy understanding, will be produced as self-contained teaching aids, in order to facilitate their use. The well-established good-practices incorporated into the professional context will be transferred from partners according to their area of expertise. In the project 7 prominent institutes with different institutional structures will participate from 4 European countries (Hungary,Romania,Spain,UK). The common feature of all partner institutions is their focus on rural unemployment and social disadvantage related to agricultural activities for what the solutions based on partners’ competencies and experiences will be elaborated together. Pilot courses organized for future trainers and end-users during the project lifetime will provide the opportunity to test out the transferred solutions before they are incorporated into the final project outputs. Localization mechanism will ensure that all elements of exchanged, transferred and developed best-practises are adoptable under Hungarian conditions. Our vision with the project is to provide tools to local authorities to initiate training in small scale organic farming practices which will lead into the creation of, not just utilising the manpower, but providing human development opportunities, which can lead to longer-term solutions. We expect that the project will have important impacts at all levels including the social dimension, as the trained trainers will influence the thinking of the decision makers in local authorities and by becoming acquainted with the global, holistic approach of organic farming they will also influence higher level decision-making.
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