The importance of local identity in rural area promotion

Rural tourism and home production as ways to promote local identity and attract youth to rural areas

Population ageing and people out-migration from rural territories imposes new challenges for finding original ways for attracting young people to rural territories. The Local action group (LAG) „Jūrkante” is located in Salacgriva, Latvia, on the shores of Gulf of Riga. The area of our responsibility exceeds 650 square kilometers, extends 63 km along the coastline and has more that 14`000 residents. With 3 towns and few villages in the area, our territory is markedly rural and the negative population trends here are particularly striking.

The objective of this project is to promote local identity through rural tourism and home production with a more far-reaching aim to maintain the connection of local youth with their area so that they would consider returning to their place of origin. There are two main target groups for our project: 1) the local youth, who can provide valuable insight in both – reasons for leaving and preconditions for returning to rural areas; 2) present and potential rural tourism service providers and home production performers, in cooperation with which the excess potential in the joint field can be identified. As the project concept is still in progress, there is no complete activity plan; activities like experience exchange seminar organization workshops etc. are crucial for reaching our aim.

We have identified the potential of rural tourism and local identity promotion in providing the second wind in terms of population regeneration and are looking for international partners who share our issues and are seeking a way to handle these issues.

Slovenia, United Kingdom, Poland, Estonia, Slovakia, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Lithuania

Europe

Latvian, English

Community development, Education, Products(non-food), Tourism, Demography, social issues

01/12/2011