On 20 June, FLIARA’s Online Forum brought together 10 European projects focusing on gender equality, rural development and smart communities. The main purpose was to initiate a discussion on possible future collaborations, and to create a common space for sharing best practices, results and lessons learned among the projects.
The host project, FLIARA (Female-Led Innovation in Agriculture and Rural Areas), is dedicated to challenging existing gender norms and stereotypes by showcasing the innovative capacity of women in farming and rural areas. Particular focus is placed on innovations that contribute to the four dimensions of sustainability: environmental, economic, social, and cultural.
The projects featured, such as Grass Ceilling, DEMETER and SafeHabitus, all have a common goal: to take action in the agricultural sector, focusing on new collaborative, social and digital approaches, greater inclusiveness and greater safety and sustainability in farming.
Patricia Martinez , Social Innovation Expert at AEIDL, presented SafeHabitus and explored potential avenues for synergies with other projects , in sharing results and lessons learned and joint efforts in dissemination, exploitation, and communication activities. Patricia highlighted the importance of multi-stakeholder collaboration in the SafeHabitus project, to be able to tackle social and environmental challenges that influence the health and safety of the farming sector in a more efficient manner . Patricia also noted the importance of paying attention to gender considerations as a transversal dimension of all interventions.
You can find the list of projects that were present at this online workshop below, and don’t hesitate to visit their website or social media for further information and engagement:
- GRASS CEILING (Gender Equality in Rural and Agricultural Innovation Systems) is a multi-actor three-year project, funded by the European Union in the frame of Horizon Europe. GRASS CEILING aims to empower rural women and increase the number of socio-ecological innovations led by women in agriculture, the rural economy and rural communities. The project will contribute to advancing the UN’s goals on gender parity, realise the EU gender equality strategy, and achieve the goals of the Green Deal, the Farm to Fork strategy, the Long-Term Vision for Rural Areas, and the European Pillar of Social Rights.
- COEVOLVERS aims to explore how nature-based solutions can contribute to the societal change needed to address the ongoing biodiversity and climate crisis. Partners of COEVOLVERS are working on co-designing fair nature-based solution (NBS) governance techniques, models, and practices.
- SWIFT seeking to advance gender equality, the EU-funded SWIFT project will provide new insights and co-create novel approaches with 21 agricultural women-led innovations in 12 countries distributed across Europe, as well as 4 in Brazil and the USA. SWIFT will provide theoretical and practical tools, such as gender-responsive budgeting and feminist farm viability indicators, to enable a change towards more just, effective and diversified farming.
- PREMIERE project fosters the development of coherent and well-prepared multi-actor projects. Firstly, it is building project consortia that make best use of the complementary knowledge of their members. Secondly, it is providing insights to support the implementation of innovative governance and decision-making in policy for the green transition. In general, the project is testing the effect of providing seed funding to at least eight multi-actor organisations (mainly operational groups) and prepare a handbook of good practices.
- DEMETER project is a large-scale deployment of farmer-driven, interoperable smart farming-IoT (Internet of Things) based platforms, delivered through a series of 20 pilots across 18 countries (15 EU countries). Involving 60 partners, DEMETER adopts a multi-actor approach across the value chain (demand and supply), with 25 deployment sites, 6,000 farmers and over 38,000 devices and sensors being deployed.
- AURORAL (Architecture for Unified Regional and Open digital ecosystems for Smart Communities and wider Rural Areas Large scale application) focuses on increasing connectivity and delivering a digital environment of smart objects interoperable services platforms able to trigger dynamic rural ecosystems of innovation chains, applications and services.
- ATHENA project is committed to striving towards gender equality, mitigating barriers to the recruitment, retention, and career progression of female researchers, and addressing gender imbalances in decision-making processes. ATHENA delivers and implements Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) in 8 research performing (RPOs) and research funding organizations (RFOs). ATHENA ensures that all people, disregarding of their gender, will have the opportunities to express their potential in research and contribute to an innovative, competitive and thriving Europe society
”. - EU-FARMBOOK is a Horizon Europe project that is working at regional, national, and European (EU) levels, to build a Digital Platform, gathering and sharing agriculture and forestry knowledge.
- GENDERACTION+ is a Horizon Europe project which aims to contribute to the coordination of gender equality and inclusiveness objectives of the new European Research Area through the development of two Communities of Practice, one consisting of national authorities and the second of representatives of Research Funding Organisations. The network comprises 22 EU Member States and 3 Associated Countries with 26 project partners and 14 Associated partners.