We will organize trainings for target groups in all project countries. The trainings will be held by partners in-situ in the pre-identified rural areas for 40-50 participants per event, but they will also be live-streamed to widen our reach, ensure inclusion, and provide an opportunity to learn for anyone unable to attend personally. The main goal of the training is to educate participants about relevant national and EU policies (e.g. Rural action plan, European Green Deal), key facts about the climate crisis, impact on rural areas, ongoing adaptation and mitigating measures, individual and community climate actions, how policymaking is affecting their lives, and basic participatory and active citizenship methods and tools that can help them influence the policymaking process on national and EU levels (including ECI, consultations, complaints, recommendations). The reason we’re starting the series of engagement events with such an activity is that informing citizens of their rights, responsibilities, and options, and disseminating knowledge is the critical first step to legitimate participation – without knowledge and information, citizens are much less able to step into the policymaking process to meaningfully influence it.

After the first, information-sharing stage, we will then move toward more-practice oriented participatory methods. First, we will host in-situ workshops in the five project countries for 40-50 participants. The training participants are natural candidates for participation (to put their theoretical knowledge into practice), but anyone can apply or follow the live stream. We will also invite local policymakers to participate so that citizens and policymakers can meet in a more informal setting, try collaboration methods, and build a working relationship. The workshops will use modelling and simulating participation methods and techniques like simulated, gamified planning and preparation of local climate-related actions. Topics and scenarios will be identified based on the previous problem-mapping activity to address real-life issues. Activities will include, among others:

• Simulation exercises with role play and social sensitization: Community planning for the elaboration of a realistic idea (community park/garden/, pop-up farmers’ market, selling and buying under the umbrella-like cooperative brand etc.) works more efficiently in the frame of gamified roleplay. That is also one of the easiest ways to develop empathy and mutual understanding towards each other in the community. The roles (relevant stakeholders) are determined coincidentally, so participants are better able to understand each other’s positions and thus collaborate more efficiently in the future. In order to imagine a climate-adaptive, livable rural community of the future, develop scenarios, explore alternatives, and prepare the (right) decision, it is essential to understand the various perspectives of actors, like decision-makers, stakeholders, and local inhabitants.
• Participatory budgeting: participants engage in deliberation regarding how public resources should be allocated and distributed for climate-related local projects. This enables citizens to understand how public budgets and planning work, so they can provide concrete recommendations in the future.
• Climate platform: Applying a climate-adaptive serious game in a rural-urban environment is one of the outstanding new methodological possibilities to create awareness, train new skills, and increase engagement to help make the most informed decisions possible for the future steps of rural-urban development. During the game, participants (independently of their age, social or cultural, etc. background) will be able to learn about solutions, tools, and techniques that can be applied in their own lives to help them become climate-conscious citizens in a special, friendly learning environment that allows them to reduce the impact of climate change.

During the 2-days long workshops, participants will acquire new skills regarding participatory methods and tools and prepare local climate-related community actions.