Cooperation

The new West Lothian LEADER programme will officially launch on 17 March at SRUC Oatridge College Campus.

The West Lothian LEADER programme will see £2.17 million invested in community-led local development in rural West Lothian.

West Lothian LEADER launch

West Lothian has been awarded £2.17 million for community led local development in rural West Lothian.

Administered under the Scottish Rural Development Programme Leader is a European grant scheme that supports innovative and original projects that are driven and run by local communities, businesses and organisations. It also focuses on co-operation between groups both local and national and even cross Europe.

The agricultural European Innovation Partnership (EIP-AGRI) has issued a call for experts for two new Focus Groups.

Do you have practical experience or specific knowledge in the following areas?

The new Forth Valley and Lomond LEADER programme launched on Friday 29 January, with £2.78 million of funding to be invested in rural communities across the region.

The event took place at the Callander Youth Project, which was voted Scotland’s top youth project in 2015. Peter Sunderland, Local Action Group Chair, highlighted examples of good practice, including one which inspired a participant to become an international expert on project continuity. 

The annual Scottish Agricultural Organisation Society (SAOS) Member’s Day and Conference was held at Crieff Hydro in Perthshire on 28 January.

Around 100 delegates were treated to a stimulating mix of guest speaker presentations, interactive debate, practical advice and networking opportunities.

Angus LEADER Local Action Group will be playing host to visitors from Georgia this February.

Angus LAG is supporting the development of a rural strategy for the Borjormi area of Georgia. Eleven Georgian visitors will visit Angus during the week of 1 to 5 February 2016 looking at some of the successful projects from the previous programme, and meeting key players from the Scottish and European LEADER scene.

Over 100 people from across rural Perthshire braved the snow and ice to attend the launch of the Rural Perth & Kinross LEADER programme on 14 January. 

After a spot of networking at the various stands the meeting commenced with the Local Action Group Chair, with Jackie Brierton speaking passionately about the opportunities that the Local Development Strategy offers in terms of stronger networking, collaboration, a well connected sustainable local economy with communities coming together.

A report from a study visit to Dumfries and Galloway by Ceredigion and Cairngorms LEADER Local Action Groups is now available.

Below is the Executive Summary of the report, and you can also download the full report for more information.

SAOS Members' Day and Conference: shaping future agriculture through cooperation

For their 2016 conference, SAOS are continuing with the format of two morning forum workshops. They expect this year’s topics to prove popular as SAOS’ Jim Booth will be joined by Angela Tregear and Sarah Cooper of Edinburgh University Business School to discuss the results of a study of four marketing co-ops and the role co-ops play in supporting KT/learning amongst their members. The other forum, hosted by their next generation team members, with guest speakers, examines why we sometimes criticise, rather than celebrate, business expansion and success, assuming “they just got lucky”.

Over 200 people recently attended events on the new Environmental Co-operation Action Fund in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Inverness.

The Environmental Co-operation Action Fund is a new £10 million scheme which is part of the Scottish Rural Development Programme (SRDP).  The purpose of this new competitive fund is to encourage the development and delivery of landscape scale environmental projects by paying facilitators to initiate and enable co-ordinated environmental actions on multiple land holdings in a project area.

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