The main project goal is boosting rural citizen participation in climate and environment-related public discussions, actions, and policymaking. Our strategy to achieve this objective is reaching and involving rural citizens who are currently inactive in or disappointed by existing local or EU-level policymaking with different kinds of innovative and impactful participatory methods. We would like to guide rural citizens through various stages of participation from awareness raising and information through direct and concrete community action to engagement with policymakers and participation in policymaking. This requires both information-sharing and practice-oriented actions so that citizens acquire a diverse range of knowledge and skills to become active citizens. All our project activities are connected to concrete local environment and climate crisis-related community problems and issues so we can try and develop locally designed responses and solutions corresponding to each territory’s specific needs and possibilities. This also deepens citizens’ engagement as climate action is connected to real, tangible issues and not just abstract concepts.

Each project activity will introduce and test a new type of participatory method in the designated rural areas. We would also like to gather important data regarding the current levels of climate policy awareness of rural people and local environmental issues and concerns, as well as evidence regarding the efficiency of various participatory mechanisms in different rural target groups and environments. This way we can build up a repository of best practices for boosting rural participation methods for climate-related discussions and actions.

The chosen activities with the underlying participatory methods and approaches are:

1. Research, survey, symposium – collecting citizens’ views, informing policymakers of research results and citizen concerns, consultations
2. Educational training – awareness raising, information sharing, better understanding of EU and national climate-related policies, capacity building
3. Decision-making modeling and simulation workshop – gamification, simulation, participatory budgeting, social sensitization
4. Hackathon – ideation, collaboration, peer-learning, co-design
5. Eco placemaking – sustainable co-design, collaboration, bottom-up community building, community-led local interventions
6. Visual storytelling – social communications, digital activism
7. Virtual town hall meeting – direct engagement with policymakers, policy recommendations by rural citizens