Erasmus+ Ecolocal Project for Youth: Local products as a means of employment and sustainable development

The first thing to keep in mind is that the main objective of the ECOLOCALYOUTH project is to develop rural economies through fresh organic agricultural products sold online by young residents of participating municipalities. Beyond this idea, ECOLOCALYOUTH acts as a driver for the economies of rural municipalities, empowering their youth to sell products from their traditional agricultural jobs. This is directly linked to the promotion of European Union values, such as tolerance, diversity, and cooperation. Furthermore, all these skills will be implemented through non-formal education methods that will provide young people with the necessary tools to transfer knowledge to other young people in their respective areas. ECOLOCALYOUTH will also serve as a meeting point for young people with entrepreneurial interests on innovative business models related to traditional agricultural economic sectors, which will inevitably lead to their own collaboration, enabling the internationalization of entrepreneurial opportunities for young people from rural municipalities toward new forms of income and business. In this way, young people will also create an international network that promotes the online sale of fresh rural products and learn to foster new opportunities for professional and personal growth. Furthermore, there will be a significant impact on the economy and social life of Benejúzar that definitely cannot be ignored: from the municipality's perspective, the leader will involve businesspeople, local authorities, and even citizens who will participate at some point in the activities carried out outside.

These indirect participants will be a very important key to the project, as the formal participants will interact with them, but also, and crucially, they will learn from each other. In this sense, it is expected that all parties involved in the project will be familiar with the new 21st-century economic model and how to apply it in rural municipalities, involving the Benejúzar City Council in the dissemination processes. Dissemination is a truly important issue for this project. First and foremost (and as an unwavering rule), we will be able to make available to the project the website and social media spaces that will be designed to give visibility and accessibility to the project results, the contacts of the professionals involved, the entities, the materials, and the information that will always be visible and available to the public. The young participants will also be the cornerstone of this process, as this experience can be very rewarding and decisive in their professional and social aspects (self-confidence, discovery of a foreign language, encounters with young people from other cultures, discovery of other European cultures). realities...), in addition to developing different skills to become aware of different social and cultural realities, to discover other cultures, habits, and lifestyles, especially through education, strengthening values such as solidarity, respect, and active participation. All this while young people learn the skills that will lead their municipalities toward a prosperous future, the digital future of the 21st century.

Finally, ECOLOCALYOUTH is an extremely important opportunity for Benejuzar, as it will allow him to work as a leader with other partners in an international team, creating a culture of community and proactive work, independent of the discourse of each institution. It will also generate positivity, synergies, and joint work programs in the respective territories with a greater awareness of EU values, including multiculturalism, European citizenship, and the objectives of the Europe 2020 Strategy. This strategy establishes a collaborative network among project partners, which is gradually being joined by other Europeans. Partners are added voluntarily to collaborate on future proposals and exchange experiences, in addition to generating greater interest among other entities in European projects and the benefits they generate, and leveraging the results in new experiences and projects in other regions.