Good Practice Manual - Associação do Turismo de Aldeia (english version) by Indigo Comunicação Visual

TECHNICAL TEAM Carla Melo (coordenation), António Figueiredo, Artur Costa, José Portugal, Pedro Oliveira, Rui Figueiredo, Sónia Trindade

GOOD PRACTICE MANUAL Editorial coordenation Quaternaire Portugal, Consultoria para o Desenvolvimento S.A. Graphic Design Marta Borges Writers Quaternaire Portugal, Consultoria para o Desenvolvimento S.A. Proofreading Quaternaire Portugal, Consultoria para o Desenvolvimento S.A. Translation Alexandra Côrte-Real Print 5000 copies Pre-print, print and ﬁnishing Greca, Artes Gráﬁcas ISBN 978-989-20-3492-8 Legal deposit 353271/12 Pictures are legal property of: © Quaternaire Portugal, Consultoria para o Desenvolvimento S.A. © Francisco Lobo, José Pedro Lopes and Juliana Vaz Constantino (Anexo82 Produções) The "Good Practice Manual" was composed in Fedra Sans, Fedra Serif A and Std Rockwell types and printed on IOR 120 g paper, sewn to the cover on Conqueror Stonemarque Hight White 300 g paper.

PUBLISHER ATA – Associação do Turismo de Aldeia Praça da República 4990-062 PONTE DE LIMA, Portugal

GOOD PRACTICE MANUAL ASSOCIAÇÃO DO TURISMO DE ALDEIA

Contents 5 Presentation 7 Introduction 11 Good Pratice Manual 31 Summary

Presentation The goal standing on the base of the creation of the Associação do Turismo de Aldeia (ATA) was the need to gather efforts in the reinforcement of its associates’ territory representation, through tourism promotion and the enhancement of the villages inside their areas of intervention, as well as through their endogenous local and regional resources. ATA was created in 1999 as a national association, which gathers, today, fifteen Local Development Associations (LDA), and has an intervention area extending to the whole Northern region of Portugal. The above mentioned LDA’s have been supporting the villages’ development and requalification, through the financing for the recovery of façades in traditional buildings and public infrastructures, for the creation of tourism lodging, arts and crafts, commercial stores, regional cuisine, taverns, restaurants, among others, through the training/gathering of the attention of the population and economical agents, as well as for holding cultural activities. All the above mentioned financing allowed the achievement of some of the LDA’s goals, for example, the fixation of population in the villages, the creation of jobs, the encouragement of traditions, an increase in the populations’ self esteem and the reinforcement of identities, an improvement in the life quality and consequently, a positive visibility of its territories. Therefore, it is time to learn about and create the necessary conditions, and to adopt better practices in order to achieve a new development impulse for tourism in the village, to ensure the sustainability of resources and to create a synergy net together with the local and regional involving area. Following this presupposition, in the application presented to the National Rural Net Program with the Project “Village Tourism as Economical Enhancement Potential in Rural Centres”, ATA proposed the identification, evaluation and dissemination of good practice developed by the LDA’s in the past decade. This good practice is especially connected to tourism development and promotion in villages inside their areas of intervention, as well as a whole set of elements associated with them, namely local products, patrimony, tourism lodging and animation. This manual, a result of this application, is precisely based on the need to organize, synthesize and put available a set of information, reflecting and deepening the experiences that have taken place, and, at the same time, allow an evaluation of good practice and concepts that may be useful for the present and future followers of the methodology, because of the development and enhancement of rural centres, the increase of entrepreneurial competition and of entrepreneurship in rural areas and also the enlargement and reinforcement of cooperation nets.

The Directorate of ATA

Introduction In Portugal, public policies, namely the ones regarding territory, are usually characterized by a lack of persistence in support, instability or even contradiction in orientation, and therefore involving challenges that are little stimulating to the sustainability of local and sub-regional institutional framework for the acceptance and enhancement of such policies. The inefficiency of resources brought by this practice is easily understandable. Also understandable are the challenges that instability creates in the local institutional net, more entrepreneurial or more stagnated, it doesn’t matter. Such a pattern of policies will hardly create consistent impact, and it will certainly be difficult to foresee remarkable learning improvement for the referred local institutional net and for those who invested their hopes and projects of professional development in it. Well, on the contrary, public policies of intervention in rural environments are one of the rare, if not even the only one, exceptions to this lack of persistence pattern. With the contribution of communitarian policies and their impact in national territory, such policies have kept a certain orientation regularity along successive program periods. And, more important than that, they have allowed a support to a local institutional net, whose projects end up having an important example effect in these territories, so that new candidates to the experience can emerge. The role of the LAG – Local Action Groups, coming from the projects LEADER (I, II, +), has been the fulfilment of that mission of memory, persistence of orientation, demonstration of effects and coordination of processes at a local level. When that happens, the gathered resources invested by public policies tend to present much higher efficiency and efficacy levels, justifying the public choices that presided the financing of such policies. We can’t ignore that one of the most serious difficulties of the territories with low density and mostly rural is the lack of local institutional energy, which is, besides its weakness, frequently also paradoxically atomized and without coordination rationality. In this context, the emergence of a local institutional framework strongly associated to the referred persistence of public policy orientation, has represented a strong contribution for the consolidation of governance models of rural development, that a centralized country like ours and the still incipient municipal intervention in the areas could not ensure for themselves. However, besides that, it’s worth referring the relevant role such experiences played in what concerns the dissemination of tourism as an instrument for rural development. Actually, the previously mentioned territories are not only characterized by the weakness of their institutional framework. They are also territories lacking initiative capacity, opportunities for the creation of jobs and for the injection of income in local economies, in search for alternatives to the uncertainties created by the dissociation between competitive agriculture and agriculture of territory brand products. Well, tourism as rural development instrument fits like a glove in that unstoppable search for alternatives: ◆ allows the enhancement of specific diversified assets in these territories; ◆ injects income and can enhance local employment; ◆ awakens local population for entrepreneurial tasks and resource coordination; ◆ makes connections between local and wider territories, taking advantage namely of the use of information and communication technologies as visibility instruments in global economy; 7

◆ it also creates new connections between competition and cohesion, showing that these territories can bring new offers, enlarging what we could call territorial base of the national territory competition. All these considerations justify the reach of the initiative promoted by ATA of conceiving a manual of good practice identiﬁable in the initiatives’ time, putting it available not only for the local players that lead and/or participate in these experiences, but also for new players that identify this kind of projects as the opportunity they always ambitioned to project themselves in local societies. And the good practice methodology that conceptually supports this manual was made with this pedagogic character. It identiﬁes good practices from a sequence of requisites or properties that a cycle of initiative project of this nature should ensure. The examples of good practice are selected by their particular relevance to highlight results and the recognition in these requisites. With this perspective, not only do we show a scenery of public policies that contradicts the idea of the lack of persistence and of the instability of the orientations aimed at less favoured territories, but we also invest in its continuity and in a learning wave that projects them in the future even more efficiently, with wider impact and with an example effect for new initiatives.

Good Practice Manual The present manual intends to assume itself as a useful instrument for all agents involved in the planning, implementation and management of (tourism) projects in rural environment. In this gathering of recipients, the Associação do Turismo de Aldeia (ATA) itself, its associates Local Development Associations (LDA), entrepreneurs and tourism projects’ promoters, and all those who, directly or indirectly, participate/support interventions of tourism nature in rural territory. The manual was created following a split methodology which allowed on the one hand to take advantage of the existent knowledge on rural development, public policies and tourism, and on the other hand to be part of a reflexion around the initiatives that already took place or that are taking place in ATA’s acting area, that allowed to contextualize the Association’s intervention spectre itself. The two resources allowed a systematization of the methodology referential represented here. Technical visits to the villages were a way to identify the most remarkable aspects and the evidence of significant results in parameters considered crucial for the success of rural development projects. Benchmarking research and analysis allowed the incorporation of knowledge that contributed to the definition of the principles to maintain in interventions in rural environments. Therefore, the followed methodology allowed to complement and enrich a more technical and theoretical knowledge, with a more practical and operational one. Worth highlighting is, however, that this manual does not represent a project analysis’ work, or even a picture of the situation, even though this is not ignored in its presuppositions. This is the creation of a methodology referential that tries to systematize the principles to orient interventions made in rural environments, with the aim of contributing for the development of the territory, through tourism. As previously referred, this methodology referential for good practice in intervention in rural environments was developed from the analysis of a set of projects implemented in ATA’s intervention territory. From all the ones classified as Villages of Portugal, seventeen were visited and the initiatives held in them analysed. The analysis process tried to highlight the good practice shown in the interventions, as well as to mark paths for future development. From this analysis process we were able to define a methodology referential that points out four key principles of good practice in interventions in rural environments: 1. Persistence; 2. Coherence with public policies and pertinence in the fulfilling of goals; 3. Capacity of response to challenges in target territories, namely in what concerns: 3.1. Demographic Increase and Population’s Entrepreneurial Capacity, 3.2. Injection of Income and Job Creation, 3.3. Individual and Institutional Empowerment, 3.4. Life Quality and Comfort Level of the Local Population, 3.5. Improvement of the Environment and Landscape, 3.6. Architectonical Improvement, 3.7. Improvement of Other Specific Assets;

4. Usage of innovative adequate tools that contribute for its sustainability, namely: 4.1. Integration in Nets and Development of Partnerships, 4.2. Application of Quality and/or CertiďŹ cation Norms, 4.3. Development of Communication Models for the Market, 4.4. Application of Management Models and Innovative Governance Practices. In this context, good practice means a practice that, being persistent throughout time and coherent with public policies in force, contributes for the development of the rural environment giving answers/contributions for the resolution/minimization of structured problems in these territories, adopting innovative adequate tools, which contribute for their sustainability throughout time. In the following pages we will explain these principles, being worth referring that the selected examples given to illustrate them are not exhaustive and result from a critical appreciation that tried to value the most differentiated and most notorious aspects found in the several observed villages.

1. PERSISTENCE The principle of persistence is connected to the relevance of interventions that reflect an acting line developed coherently throughout time. The actions should create supplementary added values among themselves and result in a cumulative effect of synergies that potentiates the positive impacts in each intervention. That is, the development of rural environments cannot be ruled by isolated and unconnected interventions, which do not offer conditions for the continuation of the benefits and for the sustainability of the interventions themselves. The mobilization of local parties in contexts of severe lack of resources aiming at their creative transformation, can only be the result of persistent intervention processes. This persistence should be observed not only in the scope of the interventions made/supported by the Local Action Groups/Local Development Associations, but also in what concerns interventions led by other parties in the several components of rural development. Persistence is also justifiable by the need to pay attention to the thickness of the economical, social and cultural contexts over which one is intending to favour changing strategies and behaviours. Besides that, persistence is necessary to ensure the time needed for the demonstration of effects and adequate organizational learning conditions. Many of the villages that were visited have been continuously going through several interventions since the 90’s until nowadays, and it is possible to see the effects this persistence in action has been giving. The first interventions aimed mainly at the villages’ architectonical preservation and the recovery and improvement of public areas. However, more recent interventions have essentially been trying to enhance the villages’ economic and productive basis, through the support of the creation of businesses that allowed an injection of income and the creation of jobs. The projects led haven’t always been supported by public financing and, in many cases, we can see that the first registered interventions have been led by the population itself. The village of Montesinho (Bragança) is an interesting example: the interventions supported by -

The involvement of the population and their acknowledgement of the villages’ preservation is one of the proven successful factors, as it contributes for a collective feeling and for an intrinsic will to value the village’s resources, which leads to a search for solutions and more creative alternatives, and grants effectively a continuous intervention of recovery and improvment of the rural world, promoted by several agents in the territory. In order to grant persistence in the interventions, the existence of careful planning is fundamental. A planning that follows each village’s specific needs and that tries to define a coherent line of action, continuously enhancing and supporting the initiatives included in the defined development strategy. Also important is that the intervention plans and development strategies defined for the territories, in a more or less formal and systematized way, are made according to the several agents and later divulged, so that there is a transversal knowledge of what is possible and desirable to do in order to effectively promote the villages’ development.

2. COHERENCE WITH PUBLIC POLICIES AND PERTINENCE IN THE FULFILLING OF GOALS Still in the scope of the importance of persistence, it is also important for the projects in development to be coherent with the public policies in force and to show evidence of their contribution for the fulfilling of those policies’ goals. This means that the interventions should be developed simultaneously according to the policy and development strategy defined for the territory and the specific goals of the available tools to make them come true, namely in what concerns the financial tools to support the investment. The initiatives AGRIS (Agriculture Measure and Rural Development), LEADER (Connection between Development Actions in Rural Economy) and more recently PRODER (Rural Development Program) have been trying to enhance and support investment projects (public and private) that contribute for the development in rural areas, based on a proximity and valuing logic of endogenous resources. This practice granted a coherent intervention in the rural world never before seen in the country. In many of the villages we are able to register a continuous use of these financing resources, which have allowed interventions of different natures and that have contributed for the progressive preservation and qualification of the villages throughout time. AGRIS is specifically aimed at the architectonical recovery of the villages and their public spaces, whereas the other financial tools have been focusing on the creation of alternatives to agricultural production and the village’s tourism improvement as a tool for its development.

As previously referred, many of these villages have been registering interventions supported by public and communitarian funds in the past decades, therefore they have been carefully evaluated and selected by the financing entities that are exactly trying to ensure that the supported projects are coherent with the development policies and that they may objectively contribute to fulfil their goals. However, not all projects are financed, so it is also important to ensure that the several entities responsible for the approval and licensing of the projects follow the basic principles of the public policies in force, searching for a more effective proximity and articulation among each project’s specific goals and their contribution for the fulfilment of collective wider and more embracing goals. In order to achieve this global perspective, we need an agreement between the several agents in the territory, being worthy of highlight the role that the public entities with competences in the area may play. It is also important to enhance the participation of the public and private agents in the discussion of the development strategies defined for the rural world, in order to grant a generalized understanding about the importance of action in things that may effectively contribute for the development of rural areas.

3. CAPACITY OF RESPONSE TO CHALLENGES IN TARGET TERRITORIES The rural world presents nowadays big weaknesses that prevent its development and on which we need to act assertively and efficiently. Therefore, it’s fundamental for the interventions in these territories to contribute effectively for the resolution/diminishing of the main structural problems that characterize them. This contribution can focus on several aspects that will be explained in the following points.

3.1. DEMOGRAPHIC INCREASE AND POPULATION’S ENTREPRENEURIAL CAPACITY Population exodus in rural areas has been stressing the demographic decrease and population ageing in these territories. An aged population has fewer conditions to promote activities that enhance the development and regeneration difficulty, what will inevitably contribute for the disappearing of a few traditions and know-how in the rural world that would be important to preserve. The rare resource of “initiative capacity” tends to become even rarer. On the other hand the local population’s entrepreneurial capacity is highly dependent on the existence of critical forces with competences for economical activities, demanding vitality levels and population density that allow social and economical activities to enhance the development of the territory. Therefore, good practices must clearly reﬂect the contribution for the ﬁxation and revitalization of people in rural areas.

In fact, these two villages clearly show the importance of supporting the local initiative and contribute for the development of activities (entrepreneurial and others) that in some way help the enhancement of atmospheres and experiences that turn life in the village into something attractive. For rural areas it has been very difficult to hold the population and to bring in new inhabitants, because they lack support services and activities that contribute for the populationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life quality and comfort levels. That is the reason why good practice should attend to these aspects and help, whenever possible, the enhancement of all activities and services that help decrease this weakness in rural areas.

3.2.INJECTION OF INCOME AND JOB CREATION In order for a territory to be kept alive it needs economical activities to allow the creation of income and jobs, pertinent conditions to hold the population and to make the territories attractive/competitive. That being so, we believe that interventions should privilege activities that directly or indirectly enhance the local economical basis, whether through the creation of new businesses, or through the development of already existing ones, namely in what concerns the optimization of endogenous resources and the handling and distribution of local products. In many cases, this enhancement can even mean the reinvention of the local economical basis. -

It is possible to ďŹ nd similar phenomena in other villages, and the impact of the creation of new businesses for the villagesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; economical regeneration is evident. Therefore good practice should enhance the investment in rural areas, especially through the improvement of endogenous resources in the areas that frequently show a unique character, and which can turn into very attractive places, competitive in what concerns tourism.

3.3. INDIVIDUAL AND INSTITUTIONAL EMPOWERMENT The interventions to take place in rural territories should also contribute for the empowerment of local individuals and institutions, giving or reinforcing competences for a development and entrepreneurial spirit. In some of these territories it is also easy to see the existence of active leaderships by local individuals or organizations that are frequently an essential condition for the enhancement and continuation of actions. Identifying and supporting these leaderships is important. Their role as catalyser of new capacities should be highlighted and welcomed.

We could mention other examples where we can recognize a crucial role played in the divulging and enhancement of villages, involving other individuals and entities. We canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t underestimate that many inhabitants in these villages are living with passion the ďŹ ght for their preservation, showing a persistence and motivation that should be supported.

3.4. LIFE QUALITY AND COMFORT LEVEL OF THE LOCAL POPULATION The interventions should clearly contribute for an increase in the inhabitantsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; life quality and comfort level, as these are essential conditions for the ďŹ xation of population and attraction of new inhabitants, enhancing the local entrepreneurial power. That means action in what concerns collective infrastructures and services or comfort in homes, for example. A population that recognizes the existence of life quality and attractive comfort levels in their living areas and services available, will be less willing to leave rural areas and search for alternatives in urban centres, and will also be much more willing to get involved and to enhance economical activities or others that contribute for the development and active life of these rural areas. The same is achieved by the attraction of entrepreneurial young people, who search for new contexts and life styles.

Despite being aged, the population in these villages has almost always an authenticity, a genuine hospitality, and they like to share their traditions and habits with the ones who visit them. Life quality may also come from this contact and from the opportunities it creates in order to share and preserve the identity of the rural area that the population values. On the other hand, it is essential to give the villages comfort conditions that go from the easy access to services that support the population to the requaliďŹ cation of public leisure areas.

Being this a concept that assumes different characteristics in different contexts, life quality in rural areas is an essential condition for their preservation, and therefore the interventions that should take place should always attend that need and contribute for improvements.

3.5. IMPROVEMENT OF ENVIRONMENT AND LANDSCAPE A great number of rural territories where these interventions have been taking place have a huge patrimony in what concerns environment and landscape, being even, in some cases, targeted by safeguard and environmental protection tools. This patrimony is worth preserving and has huge potential for the development of tourist activity. It is therefore fundamental for the interventions to follow framing and localization criteria that respect and optimize this patrimony, being also desirable that they could even contribute for the improvement and exploitation of these resources. Tourists are more often looking for a connection with nature and for experiences that allow them to actively enjoy nature. Villages located in protected areas have excellent conditions, right from the start, for the development of this kind of activities, that’s why they should try to ﬁnd ways to take advantage of these resources, enhancing tourism search and revitalizing the villages themselves. -

The same has been happening in other Villages of Portugal, among which many beneﬁt from the fact of being located in protected areas and having been going through several requaliﬁcation and landscape improvement interventions.

It’s important for the projects taking place in these villages to be or not inserted in protected areas, to privilege a location that matches the landscape and allows an improvement of the existing natural resources, improving and exploiting them namely in what concerns tourist activity.

3.6. ARCHITECTONICAL IMPROVEMENT Rural environments are in many cases deposits of architectonical patrimony, scholar or vernacular, with a value worth preserving and improving. Therefore, the interventions should favour the recovery and improvement of architectonical patrimony and public areas, taking simultaneously into account the contribution that that recovery/improvement may give to the local population’s life quality and comfort levels. On the other hand, it is clear that the presence of a well qualiﬁed/preserved architectonical patrimony may even be an attraction factor, namely for tourists and visitors, but is not enough of a condition for the enhancement of the territory. Therefore, whenever possible, architectonical improvement interventions should always be held together with interventions for the usufruct and interpretation of this patrimony. However, the scale of architectonical improvement interventions needs to take into account the dimension of the whole. In bigger nucleus, the interventions may sometimes go unseen when held in a non continuous way by the whole. Situations in which the interventions are located in more or less organized sets of buildings allow a better result for the investment, not only in an increase of the comfort conditions of its inhabitants, but also a gain of the set’s architectonical coherence.

It is also important for the several agents in the territory to pay attention to the importance of the improvement of the buildings in villages, not only in what concerns its aesthetic effect, but also due to its contribution for the improvement of the populations’ living conditions.

3.7. IMPROVEMENT OF OTHER SPECIFIC ASSETS Rural territories frequently have material and immaterial assets that have a signiﬁcant development potential but which often lack strategies that allow their exploitation in an economical and/or social point of view. Here ﬁt regional products (food, handicraft or other), folk culture, traditions and knowhow, whose importance, although usually present in these territories, isn’t always rcognized, and also traditional events related to festivities or work. The interventions should privilege these assets. Besides the optimization of immaterial assets, such as the promotion of traditions and the recreation of traditional arts and crafts, often led by local theatre groups or recreational associations, it is possible to see in these villages the existence of optimization projects for other kind of assets.

Taking into account that, nowadays, there is an increasing search for biological products, of traditional production, it is important for the initiatives in this scope to be supported and improved, because they are effectively very important for the enhancement of rural areas. -

We could present other examples, not only in the scope of the production of goods, like honey, but also of the production of handicraft made with characteristic materials from the visited villages. It’s never too much to reinforce the importance of the preservation and commercial optimization these assets have. They are also requested by tourists, so, projects that contribute for the improvement of these resources should be supported and enhanced whenever possible.

4. USAGE OF INNOVATIVE ADEQUATE TOOLS THAT CONTRIBUTE FOR ITS SUSTAINABILITY Success and sustainability of the interventions taking place in rural areas are strongly related to the use of innovative and adequate tools in what concerns management and communication. This is probably an area in which there arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t so many successful experiences, but that is considered to deserve special attention in the future.

4.1. INTEGRATION IN NETS AND DEVELOPMENT OF PARTNERSHIPS The integration in nets and the development of partnerships, not only contributes for favourable scale gains, but also stimulates creativity and the sharing of good practice. Simultaneously, the work in net and partnership allows the creation of synergies and the optimization of rare resources, namely in areas such as promotion and communication, commercialization and distribution. Interventions in rural areas should stimulate the creation of nets and partnerships, in a vertical and horizontal logic and on different geographic contexts. This is also the mechanism that can contribute to contradict a few effects of the eventual physical isolation of some of these rural areas.

However, the integration in nets and the development of partnerships should not be reduced to the local population and entrepreneursâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; initiative. It is also necessary to optimize another kind of partnerships that often already exist for several reasons.

Other kinds of partnerships could and should be encouraged, mobilizing public and private, local, regional and national agents, by using resources and establishing synergies and complementarities among the several implemented projects.

4.2. APPLICATION OF QUALITY AND/OR CERTIFICATION NORMS In a context of growing market globalization and competition, tourist consumption (and not only) is more often led by the search of pattern quality indicators in what concerns the afforded goods and services, and therefore, the application of quality norms and the certification processes are important qualification tools of tourist offer. These processes involve the definition of norms and procedures agreed between several agents in the territory, so, the benefits not only come from the results (norms), but also from the process assumed for their definition. These certification processes may not be exclusive to food goods and lodging services (where these processes are more common), but contemplate other areas and other kinds of products. -

In a more generic way, we can also refer the certification given by ATA to the Villages of Portugal, that allows the application of a set of norms and principles that should be looked at by the villages so that they can obtain this classification and, thus, benefit from improvement and promotion projects in a wider scale. It would be important for these certification processes to be wider and more involving, what would contribute for the affirmation of local brands and economically enhance many of these villages.

4.3. DEVELOPMENT OF COMMUNICATION MODELS FOR THE MARKET It’s important for the developed activities to be transmitted in a coherent and attractive way, because on the contrary, their existence will not be visible for the market and will have less development and expansion possibilities. 27

The point is to present and promote the territory in its several valences and in an integrated way. In an era marked by the presence and control of information and communication technologies, it’s important for the implemented projects to intelligently use these technologies, not only for the visibility these can give them, but also for the quality of the service they render to all potential visitors and tourists who wish to get information about these projects. The existence of sites, blogs and pages in social nets is not new, but is often despised and its use and potential are not duly exploited. -

Other cases could be mentioned, and it is important to mention that these tools are only effective when strategically used, with a selection and constant upgrading of the information to transmit.

4.4. APPLICATION OF MANAGEMENT MODELS AND INNOVATIVE GOVERNANCE PRACTICES The success of the interventions does not depend only on its intrinsic quality, but also on the way they are managed throughout time. Their planning should involve the identiﬁcation of management models that are adequate to the nature and goals of the intervention, to the mobilization of the community and the agents (active and passive) and innovative practices that contribute for the interventions’ sustainability should be privileged.

It’s important for the interventions to be thought for a wide period of time and that the conditions for their maintenance in the period after the ﬁnancing/execution are kept, and that hasn’t always been happening.

Summary In order to optimize the use of this Manual, we present a table that summarizes the mentioned orientations and principles through the formalization of a set of questions, which should direct the decision for an implementation of projects in rural areas.

tion line and strategy applied in the territory? mentation of previously implemented initiatives?

for the territory?

COHERENCE WITH PUBLIC POLICIES

PERSISTENCE

GOOD PRACTICE CAPACITY OF RESPONSE TO THE TERRITORY’S CHALLENGES

THE USE OF INNOVATIVE ADEQUATE TOOLS

Does the project respond to some of the challenges in

Does the project involve the use of innovative adequa-

the territory?

te tools that contribute for its future sustainability? ◆

◆

◆ ◆

◆ management models and innovative gover-

◆ ◆ ◆ sent in the territory? 31