dRural project ends but its impact on Europe's rural areas continues

On 31 October, the EU-funded dRural project on digitalisation of rural areas officially finished. Nevertheless, the knowledge collected and shared with similar projects, as well as the digital platform introduced in 11 European rural regions will continue to generate impact.

After almost four years the dRural project has officially reached the finish line, with relevant results. These include the digitalisation of services marketplaces in 11 regions—three demonstrators and eight replicators across Europe, supporting local businesses and economies, encouraging inhabitants to stay in their towns, and improving the elderly quality of life. Although the project is concluding, it will keep generating impacts in different ways.

Firstly, because of the benefits brought, all regions involved in the project will keep the digital marketplaces, expanding the services offered and the municipal outreach: "In Extremadura we envisage the inclusion of 70 more services in the upcoming months"—stated Enrique Picón Roca, Project Manager at Adiper, during the project's final meeting held in Brussels on 11 October.

In the meantime, dRural has already shared good practices with the SMART ERA project partners, through three thematic workshops to spread lessons learned, transfer knowledge, and disseminate its legacy. Each workshop focused on one of the building blocks of dRural, particularly on the open calls to attract service providers and replicators, the technical implementation of the digital platform in rural areas, and advice on upscaling and replication.

The three successful workshops, attended by over 30 participants, are not the only dissemination action being carried out by the dRural partners. In the last few weeks of the project, the consortium has tirelessly shared papers, info-packs, manuals, training materials, the final video, and further content to make the project's results available and to share the knowledge collected in the last 46 months.

All materials are available on the dRural project website.

For more information, contact:

Coordinator: Myriam Martín, TICbiomed, myriam.martin@ticbiomed.net

Communication Officer: Federica Fusco, ICONS, federica.fusco@icons.it

Project website: Homepage—dRural

Linkedin: dRural | LinkedIn

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