PROFARM Scales-up all over Europe!

Three final events in Italy, Germany and the Netherlands for celebrating the closure of the PROFARM project.

After three years spent in researching, networking and experimenting, the International partners of the PROFARM project have celebrated the sucessful results achieved by organizing a national scale-up event in each partner country!

The kickstarters were the Dutch partners from Zone.college (fomer Groenewelle) and the Duth Foundation of Innovation Welfare to Work that have organized an event in Mastenbroek on the 18th of OctoberThe event started with a presentation from Henk and Hilly Pelleboer about their multifunctional company with care farm, followed by an inspirational story by Eimert Fikse about cooperation between education and care farmers. All the invited farmers contributed to the organization of a buffet to present each other's products and exchange experiences. The second part of the day was dedicate to the organization of two workshops, repeated in two rounds so to give everyone the possibility to attend: 

  • Workshop 1 'Policy developments education and care farms nationwide' by Jan Hassink
  • Workshop 2 'What is our target group? In Between Groep', focused on home sitters, exemption from compulsory education, projects & funds, deprivation and other similar topics, coordinated by Anton Kiewiet and Rita Hanekamp. 

Some weeks later, it was the turn of the German partners, Anthropoi and Petrarca, with the organization of a national event in combination with a Conference on Social Farming, which was held in 3 days from 6th of November until the 8th of November 2018 in Witzenhausen/Hessen. On the first 2 days the conference focused on practical Social Farming in Germany with a visit to two Social Farms in the area. Also the focus was on national development of Social Farming with many experts being invited to discuss the subjects of quality assurance and consultation in Social Farming, a the presence of representatives of the several federal states in Germany. On the 7th it was organized a movie night in the cinema of Witzenhausen with several Social Farm movies as well as showing the ones from the PROFARM-videocontest. On the PROFARM day, the 8th of November, the project partners presented the activities, documents and the results of the project. This was followed by a penal discussion with stakeholdes and experts of Social Farming in Germany as well as one representative from Brüssel. In the afternoon a world café has been organized with all the Case Managers involved in the project to discuss the Case Management concept. Moreover, it was given space for sharing experiences and perspectives concerning networking and quality assurance in Social Farming through Case Management.

Last, but not least, the Italian scale-up event, which was organized by the Umbria Region and the Association Study Center City of Foligno from the 20th to the 24th of November. The event started with a workshop for policy makers patronized by the Municipality of Gubbio, one of the main players in the establishment of the local PROFARM networks. The following days, the project partners met for their final internal meeting and they also had the chance to present the Policy recommendations to international peer-reviewers attending the conference. The event has included a final international conference on the 23rd morning, where the Italian winners of the #PROFARMVIDEOCONTEST were awareded together with the students who benefited from the project experimentation. Finally, the international group of partners and peer-reviewers visted several local farms in the Gubbio valley, the Agricultural School of Todi (where most of the Italian experimentations took place) and the Social Cooperative "La Speranza", whose directors are strongly interested in adopting the PROFARM model and using it also for other disadvantaged target groups. 

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