FARMS´ CHARM Project
FARMS´ CHARM Project: How to Diversify Entrepreneurial Activities as a Pathway to Sustainable Farming in Rural Areas
PROJECT INTRODUCTION
Agritourism presents a unique opportunity to combine aspects of the tourism and agriculture industries to provide a number of financial, educational, and social benefits to tourists, farmers and producers, and communities. Thanks to agritourism, farmers and producers get an opportunity to diversify their activities, generate additional income and directly market their products to consumers - tourists. On the other hand, agritourism enhances the tourism industry by increasing the volume of visitors to rural areas and prolonging the length of their stay which is currently one of the top priorities of making the tourism industry more sustainable and eco-friendlier.
OBJECTIVES
The main goal of the FARMS´ CHARM project is to increase the level of agritourism and rural tourism as a way of sustainable and eco-friendly way of traveling in Europe through upskilling farmers and rural entrepreneurs. The complexity of the project contributes to improving educational outcomes and relevant skills in Europe, focusing on climate protection, sustainable development, local and regional employability, small and medium-sized entrepreneurship and innovation.
CONSORTIUM
The project had been operating for two years involving a total of 5 organisations from 5 European countries. The consortium consists of:
Coordinator – Association of Private Farming of the Czech Republic, Czech Republic (ASZ ČR)
Project Partners
- Associazione Sviluppo Rurale, Italy (ASR)
- BEST Institut für berufsbezogene Weiterbildung und Personaltraining GmbH , Austria (BEST)
- Cyprus Agrotourism Company, Cyprus (CAC)
- On Projects Advising SL, Spain (OnP)
TARGET GROUPS
- Small agricultural entrepreneurs and family-run farm businesses, farmers
- Trainers, teachers and advisors in relevant fields such as the ecological sphere and adult education providers
- General public, public representatives, experts in relevant fields, potential beneficiaries and other interest parties
FREE AND OPEN-ACCESS DIGITAL EDUCATIONAL PLATFORM
The project outputs focused on the development of training opportunities and self-education in the areas of agritourism and rural tourism and consist of digital content OERs – Insight Educational Guidelines for mentors in agritourism, Creative Micro-learning Videos for farmers and agritourism service providers, Inspirational Case Studies of currently existing agritourism farms and the Training Platform where you can find all of the listed above free and in six languages through the official project website: https://farmscharm.com/.
INSIGHT EDUCATIONAL GUIDELINES FOR MENTORS IN AGRITOURISM
These 20 guidelines provide insights and key information in how-to understand the sector and start establishing agritourism venues. These enable users and other interested bodies firstly to cover training needs in topic-selected areas and secondly to provide specific targeted advisory services directly to other farmers and small rural entrepreneurs. At the end of each guideline, you can find a self-evaluation test to evaluate the competences acquired:
https://learning.farmscharm.com/guidelines.
CREATIVE MICRO-LEARNING VIDEOS
This set of short videos covers a wide range of topics and specific areas applied to agritourism.They help users to increase their knowledge on how to incorporate agritourism activities, effectively target them to the customers and exploit the maximum potential of one’s property. You can choose those videos that better match your training needs and set the subtitles to your language preference in the video itself: https://learning.farmscharm.com/creative-micro-learning-videos.
INSPIRATIONAL CASE STUDIES
The agritourism sector in Europe has seen significant growth in recent years, reflecting a growing interest in authentic and sustainable travel experiences. Inspirational Case Studies explore in detail the success stories and challenges faced by agritourisms located in Austria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Italy and Spain. Each case study provides an in-depth overview of the strategies adopted, the problems encountered and the solutions found, highlighting the peculiarities and best practices that characterize these examples of excellence in the sector: https://learning.farmscharm.com/case-studies.
TRAINING PLATFORM
In the training platform so called the Learning Hub the users find different resources for training in agritourism. It is a self-learning platform that enables the free use of the material in any topic according to each one needs and it is designed to guide the learning process of the user. The materials hosted by this platform cover different areas of training applied to agritourism: digitalization, sustainability, marketing and promotion, types of agritourism activities and many more.
FARMS’ CHARM Project (Diversification of Entrepreneurial Activities as the Pathway to the Sustainable Farming at Rural Areas) is an EU-funded Erasmus+ project whose primary goal is to increase the level of agritourism and rural tourism as a way of sustainable and eco-friendly way of traveling in Europe through upskilling farmers and rural entrepreneurs.
The FARMS’ CHARM project has been funded with support from the European Commission, with the reference number 2022-1-CZ01-KA220-ADU-000089506. The content of the website and other produced materials reflect the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
