Open School for Village Hosts

Dates: March - August 2023
Where: Online Platform & Community / Study visit Grottole, Italy
Duration: 6 months
Participants: 40 (across the Europe)‍

New projects & new livelihoods, are sprouting up among Europe’s multitude of small villages and the regions around them. We call the people who start and lead such projects: Village Hosts. The Open School for Village Hosts invited 40 about of 160 applications from rural pioneers, across Europe,
to join its first training programme.

One of the critical objectives of current EU policy is to maintain lively rural areas. Rural activators are the only ones able to change these areas’ fate. However, the desire to restore the rural areas should lay to all of us since we benefit from it. Rural activators face various socio‑economic pressures that make their work hard to maintain.
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Holis and six other partners for the last year were shaping the Open School For Village Hosts program content & pilot training. Currently, 40 Village Hosts connect through community platforms to bring new social, economic and ecological life to small villages and their local economy.
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Open School for Village Hosts partners: Casa Netural, Materahub, Elisava, Kobiety, CDOP & Radosa Partneriba.
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With a special advisor - John Thackara.
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NThe Open School for Village Hosts training programme is a course for future Village Hosts, where the practitioners will gain new skills, new connections, and will be able to design a detailed plan for a pilot project in their village /region which they suggest.



On completing the course, participant will be comfortable in the role as a community host and convenor. They will be confident when approaching potential funders and government officials. They will have learned about new tools and resources. They will leave with the plan for pilot project in their own village/region. Training provide 40-strong Peer Learning Circle with members across Europe. Participants in the course will gain a rich collection of stories and inspiration for use in their future work. 

Pilot Training began in March 2023 and will last till August (6 months). 20 selected practitioners will continue their training in Grottole (Italy) to attend lectures, workshops, and group assignments.
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Trainers come from several contexts: experts nominated by project partners, independent tutors and experts who are active online as independents, and a peer community of people already doing similar work.

The 7 subjects covered in the Training Programme:
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1. Reasoning (CDOP)
2. Designing a strategic vision (Materahub and Radosa)
‍3. How to discover & map opportunities and resources (Elisava and Kobiety)
4. Storytelling of a place (Casa Netural)
5. Curating activities and encounters (Holis)
6. Assembling cooperation platform & new business models (CDOP and Holis)
7. Designing a pilot project (support from all trainers)
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Project managers and experts of the Open School for Village Hosts selected the best 40 applications out of 160 to join the pilot online training. Among them are social innovators, and enterprising local officials, regional planners, farmers, researchers, farm advisors, engineers, developers, elected officials. Local citizens with unique and valuable knowledge – based on local history and ecology.

An unusual combination of knowledge, skills and qualities are needed to be an effective Village Host. Village Hosts need ‘hard’ capabilities such as digital skills, or business planning. But as collaboration experts – people who connect people – a Village Host’s most valuable skills are often so-called ‘soft’ ones: hosting, convening, facilitating, animating, and co-ordinating.
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Village Host seek out, map, and connect assets in a community that may be unknown, or neglected: people, places, buildings, and skills. As talent-spotters for emerging solutions, they connect these neglected assets in events, services and enterprises. Village Hosts are expert in the telling an inspiring story of their place. They turns promising ideas into prototypes, and new business models.

Practitioners of Open School for Village Hosts in numbers:
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Key Competencies of a Village Host highlights the key competencies of present and future Village Hosts. Its objective is to provide a framework of key skills that help a Village Host support small villages and rural areas in improving quality of life standards.

‍The competencies in the document were highlighted as the most needed from the target audience in line with the design process of Define, Design, Deliver, known as the Triple Design process, which was the baseline for the development of the training program of the Open School for Village Hosts.
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The framework is available in 7 different languages https://www.villagehosts.eu/competencies/
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