EU4Shepherds

Extensive livestock exploitation models are crucial for the sustainable maintenance of important rural areas in Europe. These models are the paradigm of ecological, social and economic sustainability. These models fight against depopulation in rural areas and have a positive impact on animal wellbeing and human health compared to other non-extensive models. These models supply consumers with quality foodl products in many EU territories and promote the sustainable development of our society.

EU4Shepherds seeks to improve and update the training offer for extensive shepherds taking into account current barriers (administrative mainly…) threads (new climate scenario and its consequences) and opportunities (ecological production trends, agro tourism, etc…) to ensure a sustainable maintenance of extensive livestock exploitations (economic, social and environmental) giving them tools to become resilient. The project will adapt the training methods (both for trainers and trainees) for a work-based learning taking into consideration current barriers and logistical problems for extensive shepherds (many of them are distributed along rural isolated areas) in order to ensure the sustainability of the profession and of extensive livestock exploitations. Furthermore, the project will provide a training platform designed for extensive shepherds (not used to complicated interfaces or texts) and will promote the use of digital tools for training.

These objectives will be satisfied with the development of three IOs:

New curricula for professional shepherds.

New flexible training methodology for trainers.

New online adapted training platform for extensive shepherds

Although Shepherds are the main objective of the project, we can say that trainers involved in the training of extensive shepherds are the key element for making possible the needed change in the training of professional shepherds, and therefore, trainers are the main target group of key project actions (IOs and training workshops).