Multifunctional role of women as a key driver for rural development MORE website is now available online
The MORE official website represents a repository of the project’s outputs, results, news and contacts, and will be the OER platform for target groups to access MORE resources and training materials.
MORE is a Project co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Commission, aims to improve the access to, and the quality of, training opportunities and qualifications of rural EU women. The realities of women's lives in rural areas have become more diverse in recent decades. In today's society, women assume a "multifunctional role" in the multi-faced context of their families (i.e. child and elderly care) and social and labour ties. This multiplicity of roles contributes significantly to improvement of their families' quality of life, as well as rural socio-economic development, civic engagement, and ways of rethinking the territorial contexts.
According to the EU Parliament, the multifunctional role of women is essential to save rural areas in Europe, whose population is expected to shrink to almost 8M by 2050, in contrast with a fast-growing urban population that will reach 24M by 2050. Rural women still face serious disadvantages, compared not only to rural men, but also to urban women. Due to the structural drawbacks of local labour markets, women have to out-migrate from rural areas at a higher rate than men. Yet, for older generations, the domestic caregiver role is a significant barrier to mobility. Rural women are more dissatisfied with educational and employment opportunities in their regions. Moreover, they contribute significantly to the farming sector in terms of working time in agriculture. However, only 30% of farm holdings in the EU are officially owned by women. Most of the time, official documents, rights, and representation within farm associations or local groups are in the name of their male counterparts.
Although rural women's multifunctional role has been stressed by EU decision-makers, it is actually not endorsed by the policy and socio-economic sectors of national and local realities.
The MORE partners have faced these challenges in first place, within the regional rural contexts in which they operate. Hence, they have decided to promote a project proposal to contribute to filling these gaps. MORE thus responds to the need for increasing rural women’s skills and capacities and making them direct actors of the social, policy and economic processes at local level. Limited research and education action have been so far undertaken on multifunctionality: MORE will overcome these limitations by conducting in-depth research analysis, developing 10 e-learning training courses and promoting the first digital community of rural women, directly supported by the feedback of target groups.
The project officially kick-started on June 6 2022, with the first online transnational meeting during which partners had a great opportunity to discuss the overall project implementation schedule, define timelines and respective duties in the following months. One of the very first activities was the development, testing and implementation of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Platform.
MORE Platform is the main showcase of project’s results and its largest and most tangible channel for international visibility, and is available in 6 languages (EN, ES, IT, RO, PL, GR) with all of its content completely available for free, without requiring any kind of registration/identification by the user. MORE website is now online at https://www.moreproject.eu/.
For the next two years, the Platform will host and integrate all the main achievements of the consortium; each section of the MORE Platform is a stand-alone library of its corresponding output.
MORE Training will consist of 10 e-courses designed for - and co-created with - rural adult women, in a way to enhance their multifunctionality to equip them with the competences, skills and tools.
These training courses will build on the thorough knowledge of partners in adult VET programmes.
The goal is to support the target group’s professional and personal growth and competitiveness.
In addition, the "Associates" section will be relevant to the widespread impact of the project, as organisations interested in the project will be able to join the MORE community and become associated partners.
For further information about MORE project: https://www.moreproject.eu/
