Lucía Lopez Marco – Page 8 – SIMRA Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas

Social Innovation and “nested” markets: finding the linkages.

23 March 20186th September 2018Lucía Lopez MarcoLeave a comment

On the 2^nd and 3^rd of March, SIMRA’s team from the University of Padova participated in the 12^th edition of the conference “Fragile rural areas”, held in Rovigo, Italy. This years’ theme was “Abnormal Exchanges. The nested markets for rural fragile areas”.

Presentation on nested markets by the keynote speaker van der Ploeg, March 2nd, 2018

“Nested” markets are, according to Jan Douwe van der Ploeg’s definition, markets that have less to do with globalised systems of exchange, and more with exchanges in real meeting places. Van der Ploeg has long studied the phenomenon, coining the concept of “nested” markets, and was invited to give the opening speech at the conference. He emphasised the multi-level nature of such exchanges, pointing out that “nested” markets are markets animated by ethical and social values, related to the quality of products, human relationships, the development of the territory and environmental protection. In his view, nested markets are a segment of a larger market that emerges from economic as well as social and political motives, and presents peculiarities such as unique infrastructure, with an aim to transform the global system. The way in which he characterises “nested” markets closely relates to the topics at the core of SIMRA.

Baba Residence, an initiative to attract young people in depopulated villages in Bulgaria

14 March 20186th September 2018Lucía Lopez MarcoLeave a comment

Baba Residence (baba – grandmother in Bulgarian) is an initiative bringing together urban youth and elderly people in low-density and remote villages in Bulgaria. Participants spend one month living and learning in a mountain village, with the purpose to create a meeting point between the entrepreneurial spirit of young people and traditional culture of elderly people from the Rhodopes mountains in Bulgaria.

Social innovations focusing on women in marginalised rural areas across Europe and the Mediterranean

9 March 20189th October 2019Lucía Lopez Marco1 Comment

This article is available in Spanish here.//Este artículo está disponible en castellano aquí.

According to the UN , “rural women play a key role in supporting their households and communities in achieving food and nutrition security, generating income, and improving rural livelihoods and overall well-being. They contribute to agriculture and rural enterprises and fuel local and global economies. As such, they are active players in achieving the Millennium Development Goals”. Rural women represent over a third of the total world population, but, in FAO’s words “they generally work as subsistence farmers, paid or unpaid workers on family farms or as entrepreneurs running on- or off-farm enterprises. In addition, women provide the bulk of unpaid care and domestic work in rural areas, thereby supporting current and future generations of rural workers within their households and communities”.

Women, as innovators, participants or beneficiaries, are playing a very relevant role in most of the social innovations collected by SIMRA. From the development of productive cooperatives in Egypt or Turkey to pooling and sharing their knowledge and expertise in the UK or Bulgaria, or setting up schemes to tackle societal issues like waste management in Lebanon or unemployment in Spain and Estonia, women are developing projects that enhance the well-being in their local communities.

Here there is a small selection of examples from our database in which women are protagonists of the social innovations developed in marginalised rural areas across Europe and the Mediterranean:

How social innovation can deliver rural services: new brochure of examples now available

23 February 20186th September 2018Lucía Lopez MarcoLeave a comment

SIMRA has just released its second brochure collecting examples of social innovation in marginalised rural areas in Europe and the Mediterranean regions.

This brochure focuses on rural services, more precisely on how social innovation can help rural services such as health, education, energy, mobility and other social services of key importance in marginalised rural areas where these services are often in decline. A sneak peek of what you will find in this brochure includes mountain therapy for people with disabilities in Italy, a residence with grandmothers to attract young people in Bulgarian depopulated villages, an eco-social farm in Slovenia and an initiative to integrate unemployed women in Spain.

How Can Social Innovation Support “The Future of Food and Farming”? Read SIMRA first Policy Brief

21 February 20186th September 2018Lucía Lopez MarcoLeave a comment

The H2020 project, SIMRA – Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas – has just published its first policy brief.

Based upon evidence emerging collected in the SIMRA project, this research project believes that smarter and more effective policies to support social innovation in rural areas have a vital contribution to make to have more resilient, innovative and attractive rural areas.

International Day of Women and Girls in Science

7 February 201810th February 2018Lucía Lopez MarcoLeave a comment

In SIMRA we are proud to have a team full of female researchers that is coordinated by a woman. We would like to share this picture of some of them with you, to show young girls that they can fulhill their dreams.

The day I adopted an olive tree

1 February 20186th September 2018Lucía Lopez MarcoLeave a comment

This article is also available in Spanish here// Este artículo está disponible en castellano aquí.

*Carmen, the olive tree I have adopted. (Photo: Apadrina un olivo)*

A year ago this week, I adopted an olive tree. I called it Carmen, after my grandmother. Whenever I want to know about my tree I just need to open an app that I have installed on my mobile phone. I can see pictures of it and whether it has been pruned, or what the local weather’s like, etc.… Once a year I receive two bottles of delicious olive oil. But what I love most, is that for only 50€ per year I am helping to employ people at risk of exclusion, I am helping young people to have a future in their village so they don’t have to migrate to the city, and I am preventing the closure of a local school in a village that, like so many others in inner Spain, have had to face the monsters of depopulation, ageing and loneliness. All at the same time as I am helping to recover hundred-year old olive trees and local traditions and conserve landscapes, care for the land, and support environmental, social and economic sustainability.

SIMRA Training workshop for Case studies team

19 January 20186th September 2018Lucía Lopez MarcoLeave a comment

12 case study teams covering European and Mediterranean regions participated in a training workshop, which kicked off the data collection phase of the H2020 project SIMRA. The workshop, organised by WP5, took place on 10– 11 January at the EURAC Research premises located in stunning Bolzano, Italy.

An important internal milestone for SIMRA, the workshop provided sound and uniform knowledge concerning the Social Innovation conceptual framework, related terms and the quantitative-qualitative framework for data collection developed by WP4 and WP6.

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