Biodiversity Foundation Project: Promoting sustainable entrepreneurship in the Spanish-Portuguese rural environment

Among COCEDER's goals are: To organize as many activities as necessary to provide the best training, information, and promotion in various fields: Social economy, employment, and self-employment; Social responsibility (economic, social, and environmental); Rehabilitation of the physical and environmental environment; Agricultural and livestock economy, transformation, and marketing; Historical-artistic, cultural, linguistic, ethnological, and environmental heritage; Crafts, rural tourism, the environment, volunteering... all based on equal opportunities. Within these COCEDER goals, we propose this project with the aim of providing tools and resources to support the creation of new green projects in rural areas. Training will be tailored and individualized to the nature of the participant's project. Throughout the process, participants will receive advice and support from entities (Rural Development Centers) associated with COCEDER, which are project incubators and mentors for sustainable entrepreneurship in the region in various sectors (special employment centers, social inclusion, services, training, education, etc.). Participants will have the opportunity to learn about these entities and benefit from their knowledge and experience. Furthermore, depending on the nature of the participant's project and taking advantage of the advisors' extensive experience in the field of entrepreneurship, they will be connected to similar experiences through a network.

This project aims to reach all people living or planning to start a business in rural areas, underpinned by values of environmental sustainability, especially women entrepreneurs.

Our strength lies in our experience in entrepreneurship and our presence throughout Spain, reaching nine Autonomous Communities with our 23 associated rural development centers and working in more than 443 municipalities across Spain. This project, specifically, will be implemented in four Autonomous Communities and ten provinces. At COCEDER, we have been committed for years to promoting social and sustainable entrepreneurship in rural areas as one of the strategies to reverse rural depopulation.

On the other hand, entrepreneurship is presented to women, especially young women, as an important way to remain in their places of origin when they return after completing their studies. This is evidenced by data that speak to the importance that female entrepreneurs are gaining in the rural economy: 54% of those who decide to start a business are women, well above the percentage in urban settings, which stands at a modest 30%. We will take advantage of this situation with affirmative action measures to ensure access to this project for rural women with entrepreneurial ideas.

COCEDER aims to raise awareness of the current situation in many of our towns and, based on our experience, to convey the need for political, economic, and social change that promotes rural areas as an opportunity for living without exclusion. Developing the green entrepreneurship skills of new generations in rural areas is one of the basic pillars for transforming this reality of depopulation. This will be the basis of the awareness-raising campaign. COCEDER aims to disseminate the need for entrepreneurship in rural areas as one of the basic pillars for halting the depopulation of our towns.