As the United Nations marks the second World Rural Development Day, six territories across France, Spain and Portugal present the first tangible results of turning strategy into local action for the Rural Silver Economy.
Today, 6 July 2026, the world marks the second World Rural Development Day, established by the United Nations General Assembly (Resolution A/RES/78/326) to draw global attention to the vital role of rural transformation in reducing poverty and advancing the Sustainable Development Goals. For the Interreg Sudoe RuralSilverHubS project, the date arrives at a particularly significant moment, as the project has just delivered its first findings on the proposed strategy shared with local stakeholders in each territory.
Rural development, territory by territory
The United Nations resolution recognises that eighty percent of the world’s poorest people live in rural areas, and calls on governments, organisations and local actors to invest in the infrastructure, services and inclusion that these communities need to thrive. The RuralSilverHubS project answers that call at the scale it knows best: the rural, ageing territories at risk of depopulation across the Sudoe cooperation area, where the project is building a Silver Economy that turns demographic change from a challenge into an opportunity.
As part of the project’s roadmap, six of the project’s beneficiaries — Gérontopôle Nouvelle-Aquitaine, Clusterlab Silver Occitanie, Diputació de Tarragona, the Comunidade Intermunicipal do Ave (CIM do Ave), SODEBUR (Burgos) and the Comunidade Intermunicipal do Algarve (AMAL) — engaged at least 59 people and organisations directly, including public authorities, universities, business-support bodies, care and social-economy organisations, and older people themselves. Across all six territories, mobility and access to services emerged as the most pressing shared challenge, closely followed by the need to make existing local services and good practices better known. Partners also converged on a principle very much in the spirit of the day: older people must be co-creators of solutions, not merely beneficiaries — reflected in initiatives ranging from Tarragona’s “pedagogical pairs” to the Algarve’s proposed senior-youth mentorship bank.
Territory by territory
In Nouvelle-Aquitaine, a territorial meeting combined training on the Silver Economy with strategic planning for the local Lab. In Occitanie, a follow-up webinar confirmed progress and set September–October as the target window for the intergenerational workshops. In Tarragona, the Local Steering Group validated the strategy through real-time digital tools and proposed a new “pedagogical pairs” format for the forthcoming Ideathon. In the Portuguese Ave region, a broad written consultation with 25 stakeholders confirmed the relevance of the roadmap. In Burgos, SODEBUR confirmed strong alignment between the roadmap and the province’s depopulation and mobility challenges. And in the Portuguese Algarve, AMAL’s consultation with eight regional stakeholders surfaced concrete proposals to value local arts and crafts and create a senior-youth mentorship bank.
“World Rural Development Day reminds us why projects like RuralSilverHubS matter: rural transformation isn’t an abstract goal, it happens territory by territory, partnership by partnership, through the contribution of every older person. Today, we are proud to share the first proof that our territories are moving forward together in the same direction.” — Fundación Finnova, communication beneficiary of the RuralSilverHubS project.
About RuralSilverHubS
RuralSilverHubS is a transnational cooperation project co-financed by the Interreg Sudoe Programme 2021-2027, bringing together nine partners from Spain, France and Portugal to promote the Silver Economy as a driver of socio-economic development in rural territories affected by demographic ageing and depopulation. The project is developing Rural Silver Labs (RS-Labs) and a Rural Silver Economy Observatory across six pilot territories, alongside a train-of-trainers programme and a call for Silver Economy startups.
RuralSilverHubS is a consortium of 9 beneficiaries, led by Diputació de Tarragona.
From Portugal, 3: Comunidade Intermunicipal do Algarve, Comunidade Intermunicipal do Ave, Unidade de Educação/Formação e Políticas Sociais and Cruz Vermelha Portuguesa.
From France, 2: GIP Gérontopôle Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Clusterlab Silver Occitanie.
From Spain, 4: Diputació de Tarragona, Sociedad para el Desarrollo de la Provincia de Burgos (SODEBUR), Universidade de Vigo, Facultade de Educación e Traballo Social, Departamento de Didáctica, Organización Escolar e Métodos de Investigación, and Fundación Delegación Fundación Finnova.
ERDF support: €948,272.81
Eligible cost: €1,264,363.75
Start date: 01/06/2025. End date: 30/11/2027