Nowadays, there is noticeable progress towards the empowerment of women, with examples of financial independence, getting high-profile jobs and the like. However, the situation in rural areas seems to contradict the above description of women's achievements.

The RWSFF project is based on the fact that balancing the position of women, despite their location, is a priority for Europe, as well as on the fact that food demand calculations by 2050 predict a threatening increase.

Both facts emphasise the importance of women's empowerment and their contribution to the rural sector, which are core values embedded in the Erasmus+ project "RWSFF: Rural Women to Sustainable Food and Farming - Fresh Food from Farm to Table.

RWSFF: Action on Women's Empowerment

In particular, the basis of the RWSFF design is the sustainable empowerment of women through support for financial independence, opportunities for decent work and so on. Obviously, it is a positive impact that will not be limited to the impact on the lives of individuals, but on communities as a whole.

To this end, the RWSFF Partnership has developed intellectual outputs to strengthen its mission.

The intellectual outputs that resulted from the partnership cooperation on this project are:

I.O.1: The Network of Women from Rural Communities (NWRC)

I.O.2: The Platform Community Access to Fresh Foods

I.O.3: The Guide Access to Fresh Foods

I.O.4: RWSFF Training of Trainers Course (RWSFF ToT) with 4 modules

The Network of Women from Rural Communities (NWRC) is delivered as a network to support women through communication, sharing ideas, and opportunities to open up cooperation and learning from each other. The Strategic Plan, as a guide for the implementation of the work of the NWRC, was created out of the need to define future guidelines that would enable continuity of work, more systematic monitoring of achieved results and better assessment of effects.

The Platform Community Access to Fresh Foods is an open educational resource that offers e-learning opportunities, as well as a virtual space for cooperation between stakeholders and connecting women with women to share knowledge and experiences (peer learning).

The Guide Access to Fresh Foods provides insight into the main typologies of Local Food Systems (LFS) initiatives and Short Food Supply Chains (SFSC), and points to their benefits. Furthermore, the consortium collected material with information related to agricultural policy, strategy from farm to fork and analysis of trends related to fresh food. The guide includes stories of successful women farmers in all partner countries of this project – Inspirational stories to which we wanted to emphasise the view that learning through a women-to-women approach and sharing stories is the best seed of knowledge.

Also, the partnership has developed a Training of Trainers Course with 4 modules for adult educators who will have direct contact with women from rural areas. Also, ToT is aimed at a wide audience that is willing to get involved and support more sustainable food production and consumption practices.

You can find more details about each of these project results here.

You can find and freely download all project results on the online platform.

The materialisation of the RWSFF project is the result of fruitful cooperation that has produced numerous quality results for this goal.

The RWSFF project is co-funded by the Erasmus + program of the European Union, within the KA2 Strategic Partnership in the field of adult education.