SKILLS +

Duration of project: 1 April 2016 – 31 March 2021
Partners:

• Ministry for Regional Development and Transport of Saxony-Anhalt
• Kainuun Etu Ltd.
• Ministry of Environment Protection and Regional Development of the Republic of Latvia
• Research Committee –
• Malopolska Regional Development Agency
• Trøndelag County Council
• Zadar County Rural Development Agency
• Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry
• Castilla y Leon Regional Government – Regional Ministry for Culture and Tourism
• Pannon Novum West-Transdanubian Regional Innovation Non-profit Ltd.
• University of Latvia
• Technical University of Ostrava

There is a digital gap between rural agglomerations and the peripheral regions as the broadband access has recently become available at a very slow pace. It led to a significant disadvantage in the digital activities of SMEs in rural regions endangering their competitiveness, therefore it is crucial to  create jobs in regions mostly affected by the demographic changes.
The programmes aimed to facilitate the use of ICT in modern SMEs often can not bridge this digital gap because they were planned on a regional or national level and do not correspond with the special needs of the rural SMEs.
SKILLS+ aims to optimize these policy measures to meet the special needs of the rural areas by giving bigger priorities to rural regions or by suggesting additional measures to increase the ratio of available financial sources for rural areas.
The general objective of SKILLS+ is to improve the competitiveness of rural SMEs and to facilitate the usage and integration of modern ICT tools.