What can rural places teach us about participation, community and sustainable local development? MONOMIT joined Activating Rural Youth in Umbria to explore these questions through experience, exchange and place-based learning.
In September 2026, MONOMIT took part as a participating organisation in Activating Rural Youth, an international learning experience focused on rural activation, community participation and place-based development.
The activity took place from 10 to 16 September 2026 at La Buona Terra, Passignano sul Trasimeno, Umbria, Italy, within Associazione Kora’s accredited KA151-YOU mobility.
MONOMIT was represented by Dragana Drljačić, Miona Knežević and Aleksandar Drljačić, who joined participants from different countries in exploring how rural places can become spaces for learning, creativity, participation and community-led change.
Rather than approaching rural development only through theory, the programme placed participants directly in a rural environment. Learning emerged through encounters with place, people and local practices, as well as through discussion, collaborative activities and reflection.
For MONOMIT, this experience was particularly relevant because rural spaces are becoming an increasingly important part of our own work. We are interested in the ways education, culture, creativity, wellbeing and community engagement can come together outside conventional urban settings.
The programme also offered an opportunity to reflect on an important question: what makes a rural place active?
The answer is not simply infrastructure or a programme of activities. Rural activation depends on relationships — between people and place, local communities and newcomers, memory and new ideas, existing resources and future possibilities.
Participating in Activating Rural Youth helped us look more closely at the potential of rural environments as learning spaces and strengthened the direction we are developing within MONOMIT around rural activation and sustainability.
The experience did not become a ready-made MONOMIT project or a formal project output. Instead, it became part of our organisational learning: a source of ideas, methods and questions that continue to inform how we think about future activities rooted in rural communities.