(23 August 2021) – For the 30-year anniversary of the LEADER programme, the Association of Rural Initiatives of Catalonia (ARCA) recently published a series of interviews of experts including Yves Champetier of AEIDL.
Yves Champetier was the coordinator of the European LEADER I and LEADER II networks from 1992 to 2000. Since then, he has worked in FARNET (network of territories dependent on fisheries and aquaculture), in the European Network for Rural Development (ENRD), and implementing similar approaches in Tunisia and Latin America.
According to Yves, LEADER must be a “hub”, a “fab-lab”, a “Bauhaus”, a place of daily democracy where all those who act, imagine and build the future meet, cooperate, and create synergies.
It should be for those that are experimenting with new activities, services, ways of living, creating and working in rural areas.
A reinvented LEADER also means contributing to rebuilding the European project with the citizens, from the territories, around the values of openness, inclusion, solidarity and ecology.