REVAB: REuse and Valorisation of Agricultural Buildings through training based on real experiences

In the last years rural areas have been facing hard challenges: the unemployment rate in predominantly rural regions of the EU is 11% compared to 8.5% in the EU and the enormous consumption of agricultural land for settlement, traffic and industry. This has led the loss of centers of rural living when there are no further uses for existing agricultural buildings. The potential for reuse of existing agricultural buildings is huge, but there is a lack of possibilities to get to real experiences in this field from entrepreneur to entrepreneur. Access to training is a key factor that needs to be improved too.

The aims of the REVAB project are:

– to foster the entrepreneurial approach of the use of existing agricultural buildings in different regions of Europe (IT, ES, BG, DE, PL)

– to stimulate rural entrepreneurs, rural land and real estate owners and young farmers to think about possibilities of (re-) use and valorization of existing agricultural real estate and farmstead respecting economic, ecologic and social effects

– to avoid further consumption of agricultural land through settlement and industrial real estate.

In the end, the REVAB project will produce the first comprehensive, flexible and fully open-source training system for the reuse and valorization of agricultural buildings. As one of the main training tools of the system will be case studies, trainees will have the opportunity of learning through real successful experiences and, for the first time, an entrepreneurial exchange about the topic will be possible on regional, on national as well as on European level. The REVAB training system will include all the aspects of sustainability (social, environmental and cultural) in addition to pure economics and will be achieved through the use of ICT and e-learning.