"<< Background >>The current Covid-19 pandemic is considerably affecting rural areas, posing challenges exacerbated by low available financial resources, not easily accessible health services and greater isolation. Rural areas are also considered safe shelters characterized by better daily living conditions thanks to easy to maintain social distancing and access to nature, to cultural and nature-based recreation activities. The Covid-19 crisis is revealing the crucial role of natural and cultural heritage for social cohesion, local development and mental wellbeing. Food and gastronomy embody agricultural practices, landscape, local history and traditions, symbolizing the cultural heritage of a territory and are becoming ever more relevant in improving the economic and environmental sustainability of both tourism and agriculture. Food serves as a strong connection between nature and human society bringing together land, heritage and the people. It is a diverse and dynamic channel for sharing stories, forming relationships and building communities. The project presents some responses to the Covid-19 crisis which generated more poverty and more pressure on the adults, mainly women from remoted and deprived rural areas. It aims at show how adults, women and NGOs from rural areas can cope with emergencies and it builds the basis to rethink the current crisis as a crucial tipping point for a resilient development of rural territories. It is key to overcome the idea of rural areas as mere food production system, calling for a broader vision of rural communities as poles of development based on local heritage, natural resources, creativity and social inclusion as essential elements to regenerate rural areas and to rapidly support their transition towards sustainable future through tourism.According to ""The professional status of rural women in the EU""(European Commission report, 2019) : ""More business education and training focusing on making business plans, developing digital and leadership skills and bookkeeping is needed for women in rural areas. Personalised coaching tailored to the needs of women is more important than traditional classroom teaching."" Tourism is seen as an economic activity that can significantly contribute to rural development and is also a major employer of women. The labour force of tourism industries includes more female workers (58%) than male workers. This is the reason that we focus our project on adults and especially on women from rural areas, who have the interest and potential to establish their own tourism business as local gastronomy point, to become economically independent and contribute to the inclusive community development.The opportunity is represented by the partners countries policy that in 2019 offered the legal framework for people from villages to set up a local gastronomy point, which according to the definition given in the law, they include units represented by the private kitchens inside rural houses, where culinary products are prepared and served directly to the final consumer, according to recipes specific to the area. The legislative and fiscal framework of the Local Gastronomic Points - an instrument at the disposal of the peasant households that offer tourist services - is now finalized, so they can be set up and exploited in Romania and across Europe.Taking into consideration this great opportunity for adults, mainly women from rural areas, who already cook in their kitchen from years, old and local recipes, using healthy and specific raw materials and ingredients, the partnership carried out a research on the educational needs of the target group, and this way it was raised the idea of the Flavours of Europe project to fill the skills gap on: personalised entrepreneurship training on local gastronomic points, digital competences for data base of gastronomy heritage and business promotion, engagement in inclusive community development.<< Objectives >>Through FLAVOURS OF EUROPE project, we will develop high quality and innovative training materials, tailor to the needs of improving the competences of low skilled adults and mainly women to create businesses and develop inclusive communities in the rural regions with diminishing populations and/or regions which suffer from economic crisis generated by COVID-19.GENERAL OBJECTIVE: Flavours of Europe project aims to develop until 2023 a new educational curricula for increasing skills of more than 800 adults, especially women with reduced opportunities from rural deprived areas on building of inclusive community development through gastronomy heritage tourism. SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES:- to improve competences of more than 800 adults in 2023 from rural areas, willing to establish a local gastronomy point by providing to them courses on basic digital skills, entrepreneurial competences, legal framework knowledge and smart use of digital marketing technologies;- To support more than 400 women in poor rural communities (out of the 800 adults of project target group) to develop and transform their cooking traditional practices and knowledge into a sustainable tourism business and to create powerful relationships between communities and the private sector until 2023; - to support 8 local learning tourism environments (comprised of more than 80 tourism stakeholders) by creating for them in 2023 a training kit useful for providing tailored education, skills development and training opportunities to adults from deprived rural area. The training kit will be focused on inclusive community development through tourism promotion and evaluation of the human resource pool within communities as to provide more effective methods to manage their local food resources better and to lead/contribute in developing tourism development policies of the community. This can lead to empowerment and consequently better resources and business management and quality product/service delivery.<< Implementation >>The project will be carried out in 24 months and it will organised and executed along a work breakdown structure with a set of six content related work packages (WP) clustered in three phases (see Gantt Plan attached) :PHASE 1 - MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORKThe aim of this phase is the creation of a management, coordination and assessment system, which guarantees the correct working of the project and the fulfilment of the established objectives, making the most of the new technologies to enhance the management quality and efficiency. The project management activity will be carried out during the entire project life and will be coordinated by NERDA and will include processes of scope, time, cost, human resources, quality, communication, procurement, risk and stakeholder management.WP1 - Project Management is coordinated by NERDA and includes 5 types of processes: initiation, planning, execution, monitoring and closing of the project. It will include from the beginning of the project the elaboration of Project Management Plan, Quality Management Plan, Dissemination and Sustainability Plan and Impact Evaluation. Four transnational meetings (Italy, Portugal, Greece and Romania) and 4 online meetings will be organized during the lifespan of the project. All of them will by documented with minutes and photos.PHASE 2 - METHODOLOGICAL&TECHNICAL FRAMEWORKWP2 - EUROCREA will elaborate the methodology for the research, training materials development and testing activities for IO1, IO2 and IO3. It will follow the elaboration of the study: ""White Paper on GASTRONOMY CULTURAL HERITAGE AND TOURISM DIGITAL MARKETING"" coordinated by the University Stefan cel Mare , which will be an research of the future trends in adults needed skills in rural areas.WP3 - Development, validation and evaluation of New Training Materials will be coordinated by NERDA:O2 - Training COURSE - FLAVOURS OF EUROPE - Digitalisation of Rural Gastronomic Cultural Heritage in Europe coordinated by NERDA O2/A1 - Handbook 1: Entrepreneur in My Village - EBS SPAIN O2/A2 - Handbook - 2: Brand &Image of my food’s place - Univ. Stef. Cel Mare O2/A3 -Handbook- 3: 10 steps for Digitalization of the Gastronomy Cultural Heritage - AIR Romania O2/A4 - Handbook - 4: From my village I can be all over the world - INNOVA O2/A5 - Training Toolkit -FLAVOURS OF EUROPE -IDECWP4 - Development of LMS Platform (Educational E-learning) FLAVOURS OF EUROPE will be coordinated by BUDAKOV FILMSWP5 - Testing of the Educational E-learning Platform : FLAVOURS OF EUROPE will be coordinated by EBS will include an survey on minimum 50 tourism stakeholders/partner for first phase of testing of IO1-IO3C1 - Carrying out of an Short term joint staff training on Educational E-learning Platform: FLAVOURS OF EUROPE will be organized by EBS in collaboration with BUDAKOVE1-E8 - Testing Educational E-learning Platform: FLAVOURS OF EUROPE will be coordinated by University Stefan cel Mare and consists in organization of 8 multiplication events (minimum 230 pers for all events) to disseminate the project results but also to apply a second phase of testing the quality and content of the results obtained during IO1-IO3WP6 - Disemination and Comunication will be coordinated by Association Incoming RomaniaE9 - Organization of the Final Conference -FLAVOURS OF EUROPE -by NERDA (minimum 50 persons)PHASE 3 - DISEMINATION AND COMUNICATIONThis phase transposing the activity 6 and will support to the rest of phases to gather the necessary knowledge and to spread the results of the project. Together with the dissemination activities, in this phase a sustainable (exploitation) plan will be designed which will ensure the future of the created training course.To ensure the transfer of the project results is the objective of this phase. An exploitation plan will be elaborated which will define the different possibilities to exploitation the results, ensuring their sustainability<< Results >>RESULTS RELATED TO THE TECHNICAL ACTIVITIES OF THE PROJECT1. IO1 - White Paper on Cultural Heritage, Entrepreneurship and Digital Skills revealing the future trends in skills needed in rural areas for inclusive community development - research 450 questionnaires/partnership ;2. IO2 - Training Course - FLAVOURS OF EUROPE - Digitalisation of Rural Gastronomic Cultural Heritage in Europe including: Handbook 1: Entrepreneur in My Village Handbook 2: Brand &Image of my food’s place Handbook 3: 10 steps for Digitalization of the Gastronomy Cultural Heritage Handbook 4: From my village I can be all over the world TRAINING KIT- Inclusive Community Development Through Gastronomy Tourism3. IO3 - Educational Learning Management System -E-learning Platform: Flavours of Europe;4. C1 - Short term joint staff training on Educational E-learning Platform: Flavours of Europe;5. Testing of the e-learning platform Flavours of Europe: Minimum 450 questionnaires/partnership and 8 Multiplication Events with minimum 230 attending participants in 6 countries;6. 1 Final Conference "" FLAVOURS OF EUROPE - Digitalisation of Rural Gastronomic Cultural Heritage in Europe"" with minimum 50 participants.In addition to these products, several additional results are expected to be developed during the lifespan of the project:RESULTS RELATED TO THE MANAGEMENT OF THE PROJECT (see Project Management chapter + annex Gantt chart):1. Internal online workspace ex. Admin Project2. Partner contracts3. Project Management Handbook4. Chairing 4 transnational and 4 online project meetings5. Meeting minutes including to do lists + evaluation results of the meeting for 4 transnational project meetings6. Meeting minutes including to do lists for 4 online project meetings7. Interim report for N.A8. Final report for N.A.EVALUATION RESULTS (more information see section Project Management):9. Evaluation plan by internal quality evaluator including questionnaires for the evaluation of the project effectiveness and project progress;10. Interim evaluation report by internal quality evaluator;11. Final evaluation report by the internal quality evaluator;12. Questionnaire for evaluation of the transnational project meetings by RCCI (results evaluation are included in the minutes).DISSEMINATION AND PROMOTIONAL RESULTS (more information see section Dissemination and Use of Projects' Results):13. Dissemination plan;14. Project logo;15. Project corporate identity;16. Flyer/brochure, in all partner languages (English, Bulgarian, Romanian, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek);17. Banner in all partner languages (English, Bulgarian, Romanian, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek);18. 2 FLAVOURS OF EUROPE newsletters in all partner languages (English, Bulgarian, Romanian, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek);19. Social media in English;20. Initial project website about the project goals and objectives in all partner languages (English, Bulgarian, Romanian, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek).OUTCOMES:- More than 800 adults in 2023 from rural areas, willing to establish a local gastronomy point will improve their basic digital skills, entrepreneurial competences, legal framework knowledge and smart use of digital marketing technologies;- more than 400 women in poor rural communities (out of the 800 adults of project target group) will develop and transform their cooking traditional practices and knowledge into a sustainable tourism business with the potential to create powerful relationships between communities and the private sector until 2023; - 8 tourism learning centers (with minimum 80 stakeholders/partnership) will develop their competences in engaging the adults and mainly women inclusive development of the communities they live, to empower key stakeholders especially local communities to take ownership of tourism development by engaging them in the planning and implementation process ."