<< Background >>The role of rurality in the prosperity of the European Union (EU) is widely acknowledged. Meanwhile, rural areas tend to lose their positions and opportunities in an increasingly urbanizing world. Despite the diversity of rural areas in terms of their socio-economic performances, natural characteristics, and cultural heritage, the majority of them demonstrates intrinsic fragility in social, economic and environmental aspects, and, consequently, different rural areas face common challenges, experience depreciation of their values and underutilization of the opportunities they are able to provide.In the 2016 High Level OECD Seminar “Delivering productivity and competitiveness for rural areas” four “areas of opportunity” emerged: forestry, local foods, tourism, and renewable energy. Forestry is considered to be an integral part of rural development. Beyond providing wood products, healthy, sustainably managed forests are valuable tools for mitigating and combating climate change. They are also locations for important recreational activities, such as appreciation of nature, hiking and mountain biking, and, together with other rural sectors, can produce a variety of local foods. In many EU countries, the local food system is used as part of a regional tourism strategy where specific foods are the focus for visitors who follow a “trail” that leads them from producer to producer. These local foods provide an opportunity to market a region’s food products to a global audience, as well as connecting local farmers to the communities in which they reside. To some, renewable energy is rural energy, because virtually all renewable energy technologies are space-intensive and thus rely upon a rural location. Wind, biodiesel, and photovoltaic technologies now represent the fastest growing energy industries, whereby windfarms require clear sites, biofuels rely on agricultural feed stocks, and solar generation, though somewhat more flexible, is increasingly implemented on open rural land.On the other hand, over the last few years experts on rural development policy have consistently identified out-migration and ageing as key trends affecting investment decisions in rural areas, along with “changes in the rural economic structure” and the “decentralization” process. Thus, rural areas share also common structural vulnerabilities: distance, lack of critical mass and low population density. Furthermore, the recession, the COVID pandemic in combination with the consequences from the ongoing climate changed have put an extra burden to rural entrepreneurs, who are facing increasing complexity and deep uncertainty in their business, exacerbating existing vulnerabilities.Maximizing the opportunities depends on a constellation of factors coming together. If one or two of the elements cannot be achieved, there could be continued stagnation or decline instead of transformation. In other words, no matter how much progress is made towards tapping rural opportunities, if rural vulnerabilities are not addressed, they could render any form of progress shallow. These discussions underscore the importance of exploiting future opportunities in a manner that addresses rural vulnerabilities and current state of the art calls for new strategies and models of rural development to be found and applied so to turn lagging rural areas into resilient rural communities.<< Objectives >>The main objective of the OREN project is to involve agricultural entrepreneurs in an interactive learning programme, specifically designed and addressed to the rural development issues in the COVID era. The partnership will develop an interactive, multi-stakeholder platform that will contain sustainable rural business models, simulation models and mathematical tools, accompanied by managerial courses targeted to agricultural entrepreneurs. The purpose is to train the participants in advanced managerial and business skills. By acquiring such skills, the entrepreneurs will be able to analyse the root causes of successful business scenarios in order to improve their expertise and skills in understanding and modelling potential good practices. More particularly, the OREN objectives are:- Discover insights and emerging patterns regarding rural business development.- Discover and analyze factors (environmental, socio-economic, geographical etc.) that contribute to successful rural businesses.- Analyze the structural elements of rural development, map the relationships that might lead to successful business models, and explore them through simulation with the purpose of identifying potential policies and points of unintended consequences- Develop and promote work-based learning for agricultural entrepreneurs with the purpose of increasing their business skillsIn order to achieve such objectives, the training will provide the involved actors with the skills to design effective business models in diverse settings and the tools (theoretical and technical) to implement them appropriately. Hence, the OREN project aims to:(1) Provide of a better understanding of the modern rural economies, generate knowledge of successful rural business models and identify the factors that can lead to sustainable growth.(2) Provide tools (theoretical and technical) for entrepreneurship in rural areas, a database of business cases and an interactive learning framework.(3) Through the acquiring of advanced business skills, the OREN project aims at stimulating local economic development especially in poor and remote areas.(4) Increase the added value of those businesses and lead to job creation in rural areas (5) Make rural businesses more sustainable and resilient to changes that hinder their development<< Implementation >>The OREN project will address such issue by implementing the following approach:(1) establish a multi-stakeholder interaction, as a valuable strategy to enhance the modern rural economy opportunities,(2) build and transfer a “dynamic capability”, which can help rural actors to engage in multistakeholder interaction for sustainability and maintain their profits at the same time.(3) Increase the business skills of rural entrepreneurs by promoting continued education and training in advanced aspects of business management despite the restriction posed by the COVID pandemic.<< Results >>Measurable results will be:- (R1) a survey of the most promising community-based rural business models, analyzing their critical success factors, delivered at month 7;- (R2) a report on the fundamental dynamics explaining the community-based approach delivered at month 15, elaborated through a collaborative model building approach, addressing: environments and social dynamics, pattern emergence, triggers and catalyzers, risks mapping;- (R3) a suite of simulation models and an interactive learning environment, developed and released at month 19;- (O4) a set of 5 complementary courses, with related course materials, to be provided together and with the support of the decision support system; these will be ready at month 16 and will address the following topics: (1) Legislative skills (EU agenda on rural development); (2) Technical skills; (3) Methodological skills (mathematical modeling; rural business innovation); (4) Sociological skills; (5) Entrepreneurial skills. Courses will be produced in English and all the elaborated material will be translated the partners’ languages too. These courses will be held fully online. It is the purpose of the partnership to engage at least 10 participants from each country.- (R4) guidelines with respect to rural development strategies, delivered at month 24;- (R5) recommendations based on lesson learnt during the project executions, delivered at month 24 and shared during the final conference (E4).These outputs will be disseminated both trough online channels and by means of two conferences (multiplier events). The first (E1), targeting civil society and agricultural organizations beyond the partnership, to share the former results of the project and gain further insights useful for tuning both the models and the courses’ materials; it will take place at month 19.Three final conference (E2-E4), will be held during the last months of the project with the purpose of disseminating the project results to relevant stakeholders and rural communities at the partner countries and the EU.