The broad target group of our project activities is the rural population, who commonly suffer from reduced access to information, basic services and infrastructure. Part of the training activities are targeted to the general public (as any adult and/or institution can be part of an energy community). However, we want to make sure that people with reading and/or understanding difficulties (people with disabilities, migrants, elderly, etc.) can also participate in the training activities, which is why part of the training contents will, on the one hand, address the issue of “easy-to-read” materials and easy access to knowledge and, on the other hand, be itself easy-to-read when it comes to the key areas of the training process.
Furthermore, we have identified more specific target groups that sometimes differ from one area to another, which will increase the scope of our project and therefore its replication value:
- A common target group for all three project areas are local authorities and technicians. This is a key group for the development of energy communities, and the most successful examples up to now have involved the participation of local governments. Nevertheless, our municipalities are small, often understaffed, where no specialised technicians are available, and therefore the need of training and making tools more easily available is big, as well as the involvement of these institutions in a process that holds community as a key factor to be developed.
- In the Spanish project area, livestock breeders, and more specifically those involved in dairy farming, are another target group of the
project. They usually have large facilities, which makes them suitable for small-scale renewable production, and very high energy consumption rates, which increases the interest for this sector to achieve greater efficiency and autonomy. Dairy farmers are usually a difficult sector to approach, but we’ll reach out to farming organisations and the regional institutions in charge of training young farmers in order to reach as many of them as possible, also from other parts of Cantabria. - Migrants are an essential part of the rural communities in the Italian project area. In small municipalities of the province of Benevento, asylum seekers hosted by the Sprar widespread reception network have become a wealth. In the lands on the outskirts of the Benevento Apennines, forgotten and depopulated, refugees are a human and labour resource, and therefore, it is only logical that this project addresses them as part of the community.
- In the French area, people involved in participatory co-housing projects, resident citizen actors, associations, local elected officials, farmers, school canteens, etc., activists and collectives, having ongoing projects or considering projects in the innovation territory of “Vallée du Gapeau en transition”, will be specifically addressed.
