Study Visits - Slovakia & Apulia

The Leader programme is a new concept in Malta. In fact Malta is the only EU member state that has not yet started implementing this programme. For this reason, the rural development department, under measure 341 encourages study visits to other EU countries where the Leader programme is being implemented.

As a Foundation we believe that this opportunity should be given to as much people as possible and for this reason we have earmarked enough funds so at least every member of our foundation is given the chance to have firsthand experience of what Local Action Groups (LAG) can do under this programme.

For this reason we planned two study visits, one in Slovakia and one in Puglia. In Slovakia LAGs are still in their initial phase. This experience helped us to understand better the difficulties that LAGs faced during the creation of their strategy and therefore how they managed to solve them. On the other hand, LAGs in Puglia have a lot of experience and our delegation there built enough contacts which will serve us when we start implementing our strategy.

Slovakia 16-23rd August 2009
The first group took off from Malta on the 16th of August. Our study tour gave us a general idea of what Slovakia was able to attain with the help of EU funds, how they were managed, how LAGs were set up and what was the focus of their respective strategies.

Apulia 20-27th October 2009
The second group visited the Apulia region in Italy where LAGs have been operating for various Leader Programmes and have become a strong part of the Italian RDP. The Maltese contingent had the opportunity to meet with various regional LAGs some  of which were GAL Meridaunia, GAL Terra d'Arneo and GAL Trulli & Barsento.