• The "LAAAB and Made in Rural" call selects five youth projects for social and community revitalization.
• The projects address topics such as intangible heritage, lost trades, and environmental awareness.

Rural revitalization is a fundamental practice for engaging residents and facilitating territorial development. Many projects planned in some regions are strategically and economically viable, but they lack the people to carry them out.

With the aim of attracting young people, the "Made in Rural" project has selected five proposals promoted by young people between the ages of 18 and 35 who aim to boost and transform their surroundings through community outreach initiatives.

These projects were born from 10 initial proposals from all over Aragon through a call from the network of Young Rural Dynamizers ( JDR ) , focused on the theme of youth in the Aragonese regions.

'LAAAB and Made in Rural' is the name of this initiative that combines the efforts of JDR with those of the public institution Laboratorio de Gobierno Abierto Aragón ( LAAAB ).

Young proposals to revitalize the territory

Following an initial application process early this year, JDR selected five proposals last May to begin the prototype and implementation. Project coordinator Sara Cortés, of the Center for the Development of the Aragon Sea Regions ( CEDEMAR ), told the PAC Network that two specific projects have already begun operations:

1. Memories and Learning ( Coleutivo Radizes ): This is a project based in Torre los Negros (Teruel) that aims to make visible and transmit aspects of intangible cultural heritage (lost trades, ancient ways of life, etc.) through artistic murals in outdoor spaces created collaboratively.

This project was already implemented in the previous "Made in Rural" campaign, and, according to Sara Cortés, it is of particular interest because, in addition to being a youth initiative, it also involves the elderly population and even children.

Furthermore, the project doesn't stop at the murals; they are created during a day of socializing organized by the group, which attracts people from both inside and outside the town.

2. Attentive to the context : three young people from Sabiñánigo, in the Alto Gállego region (Huesca), aim to recover the "essence" of a highly depopulated area that attracts tourists. Their approach is based on research, conducting interviews with older women about their daily lives in the 1940s and 1950s. In this way, they aim to highlight and make visible the intangible heritage of these people. They will subsequently upload their results to a website.

The remaining projects are still in the prototype phase, but CEDEMAR is "noticing a special sensitivity when it comes to protecting the intangible heritage" of the villages. These projects are:

3. Photosynthesis ( Ahula Creativa ): participatory artistic workshops on environmental awareness and rural and natural heritage from the Andorra Sierra de Arcos region (Teruel).
4. From Story to Plate. Art, Memory, and Food of the Intangible ( Acid Rose Group ): Young people will gather the culinary memories of older people from Camañas (Teruel) and then reinterpret them at the Teruel School of Hospitality.
5. Feito in Monlora: it will be about Two days of cultural and artistic encounters featuring participatory workshops on various artistic disciplines for seniors and children in Erla and Luna (Zaragoza).

Rural revitalization is participation

Sara Cortés emphasizes that for them, "energy is an opportunity for young people to participate and socially transform the region." However, although they intend to carry out more projects of this type, youth participation and initiative are needed: "We need young people with a high level of commitment, and sometimes that spirit of participation is lacking. That's why, in the future , we want to carry out other actions that promote this participation ," including a new call for proposals from "LAAAB and Made in Rural."

Although JDR carries out between 10 and 12 projects annually, this initiative is, for them, the "most important and the one that best fulfills" their objectives and mission. This is because the ideas come from young people, without prior mediation, and this is the true spirit of this type of project.

Members and funding

The 'LAAAB and Made in Rural' project is 70% funded by the LAAAB and 30% by JDR's own funds .

JDR is made up of 13 promoting LAGs and 20 collaborating LAGs, along with the Aragonese Rural Development Network . It also receives funding from LEADER , the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development ( EAFRD ), and the Government of Aragon .