Bank of challenges from the rural world for the promotion of Final Projects with participatory methodologies
The Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, for its own reason for being, has always responded to the training needs of people who reside in rural areas. Now it wants to go one step further and deepen the territorial cohesion and dynamism and resilience of these areas, contributing to reducing the territorial gap and the socioeconomic, gender and environmental inequalities that accompany it.
The Challenges Bank project aims to detect needs and formulate challenges based on participatory methodologies to which we can respond through Participatory Final Projects (PFP), both for Degree and Masters. The development of the PFP is framed within the participatory methodologies of Service Learning, an educational proposal that combines learning processes and community service in a single well-articulated project in which participants are trained by working on real needs of the environment with the objective of improving. Service learning is, therefore, an educational project with social utility that nourishes the second objective: elevating the teaching experience of our students by linking learning with the contribution to responding to the real needs of rural areas.
This project is also aligned with the Long-Term Vision for EU’s rural areas and in Catalonia with the deployment of the Agenda Rural and responds to the challenges of rural areas by connecting learning with specific needs through methodologies of participatory and direct collaboration with territorial authorities. agents. To achieve this, the project is carried out in collaboration with entities that connect very directly with the challenges and needs of different rural areas of Catalonia: Consorci Gal Alt Urgell – Cerdanya, leads the Practicum Odisseu program with more than 150 entities linked to each course. Federació ALLEM, brings together different social entities in the Lleida area. Institut Ramon Muntaner brings together local Study Centers and Cultural Athenaeums from all over the country. Ponent Coopera – Qualia, representing the Ateneus Cooperatius, also present throughout the national territory.
Project details:
Funding: Convocatòria de l’AGAUR d’Ajuts per a projectes amb impacte social
Project start date: September 2024
Project end date: February 2026
Team: Guida Fullana Pastor, Aina Villalonga Vadell, Teresa Nielles Algueró i Carles Rocadembosch Bruch, from Àrea d’Aliances, Comunitat i Equitat. Soledad Morales Pérez, academic coordinator from the UOC Rural Network.
In collaboration with:
Consorci Gal Alt Urgell – Cerdanya
