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Objectives

Objectives

Copyright: BLE

Current and future rural youth work leaders will gain qualifications for their local, regional and supraregional tasks with new, modern contents and methods.

Skills will be conveyed to participants in the rural sector. So they can help young people in rural areas to improve their living conditions.

They will be inspired to take on responsibility for the sustainable development in their region and learn to plan, organise and conduct their own activities and campaigns to suit their requirements.
Through the international exchange of experiences and build-up of a network of experts during the workshop, the participants are given important impulses for rural youth work in their home countries. In this way, experiences and knowledge can be shared even after the workshop has ended.

The 14 day long seminar is conducted in a 2 year interval and is unique, because it

  • creates space for meetings at equivalent level
  • overcomes borders and offers interaction between different actors in a protected and peaceful atmosphere and
  • overcomes political, religious and cultural barriers

Background

Let’s have a short look at history: Back in the 1950s, many European rural youth leaders expressed the wish to establish a permanent centre for the exchange of ideas and experiences.

This led to a meeting of representatives of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Assembly of Youth (WAY) in Paris on 22nd July 1960, where an agreement was reached to initiate the International Leadership Workshop for Rural Youth.

The International Leadership Workshop is organised by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture and was under the patronage of the FAO in recent years.

Since 1987, the German Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE) has undertaken the budgetary and administrative tasks for the preparation, realization and follow-up of the workshop on behalf of the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture.

Countless valuable ideas and project concepts to improve rural-youth work all over the world have been put into practice in the last few decades. Since 1962 more than 2,000 participants from almost 150 countries have taken part in the seminars at the House of Bavarian Agriculture Herrsching.