Boost the overall
project impact
To fuel the growth trajectory of digital solutions for Rural-Urban synergies and boost the overall project impact, RURBANIVE will launch a single Open Call (OC) providing Financial Support to Third Parties (FSTP) as a mechanism to increase the number of Rural-Urban Enablers.
The OC will be available to end-users actors from the Rural-Urban environment, such as:
- Local & Regional Administrations
- Civil Society
- Cooperatives
- Associations
- NGOs
- Local Action Groups
- Chambers and other Trade representative organizations
The Open Call will accelerate network expansion through technology & service providers, entities such as:
- SMEs and other private pro-profit or non-profit organizations
- technological spin-offs
- research institutions
etc.
The purpose of the Open Call is to provide more solutions for the rural-urban areas, accelerate the expansion of the RURBANIVE innovation ecosystem and ensure an adequate motivation of the stakeholder from the rural-urban communities. The participants will contribute to the enrichment of the RURBANIVE’s Community Store, which will serve as a one-stop-shop that offers enhanced capabilities for searching and accessing digitised solutions and services.
Through RURBANIVE’s Open Call the new digital Rural-Urban Enablers (RUEs) will be applied to geographical areas other than the existing 7 Rural-Urban Co-creation Labs (RUCLs), testing them in other regional typologies and cultural, social and local economic conditions than those of the RUCLs. These sub-projects will also be enhanced by new Business Models through participatory processes with rural and urban communities and relevant good practices.
RURBANIVE will accept applications, involving consortia of 2-4 parties (≥1 technology & service provider and ≥1 end-user) and proposed solutions must fall within one of the following RURBANIVE domains:
- improving logistics, and shortening value chains
- ecosystem and biodiversity restoration
- regional circular bioeconomy development
- user engagement, empowerment, society and territorial awareness
- culture, landscape and heritage access and promotion and
- enhanced mobility
The 12-month implementation period will be divided into 3 phases:
The Open Call will result in at least 6 projects (max 100k euro per project – with the funds dispersed amongst the consortia members, with at least one technology & service provider and at least one end-user). In total, a 600k euro budget will be allocated to financial support to third parties.
Key numbers and
date of the Open Call:
Total Open Call budget: €600,000
Max budget per project: €100,000
Budget per partner of the consortium: €20,000 – €60,000
Submission procedure
Proposals will be submitted digitally through the opencalls.fund Platform
Proposals must be delivered before the defined deadline
(March 31st, 2025, at 17:00 CET)
By applying to RURBANIVE’s Open Call, consortia automatically accept the terms and conditions of the Open Call as described in the Open Call Kit:
Call for Evaluators
Open Call Text (Fiche)
Open Call Hand out summary
Open Call Applicants Guide
Consortium Declaration
Declaration of Honour
Declaration of Conducting Business
Open Call Proposal template
Bank account information
Model Sub-grant Agreement
Proposal Template - Budget Table
RURBANIVE is looking for evaluators!
Evaluators profile
We are looking for independent evaluators, who will be able to assess the quality of applications received within the RURBANIVE Open Call, shortly after its closure. Evaluators must be:
- European – EU nationals Member States (MS) of the European Union (EU), including their outermost regions, as well as Overseas Countries and Territories (OCT) linked to an EU Member, as well as nationals of Horizon Europe associated countries, full list here).
- Experienced in Information & Communication Technologies (ITC) and experienced in business expertise related to the topics of the call and knowledge surrounding the six (6) RURBANIVE domains, i.e. circular economy, ecosystem and biodiversity restoration, improving logistics, and shortening value chains, user engagement, empowerment, society and territorial awareness, culture, landscape and heritage access and promotion & enhanced mobility.
- Experienced in evaluating EC proposals or similar experience.
An evaluator should not work for an organisation that aims to apply for the RURBANIVE Open Call, nor in an organisation participating in the RURBANIVE consortium.
All evaluators must declare beforehand any known conflicts of interest and must immediately inform the RURBANIVE Consortium staff if they detect a conflict of interest during the evaluation. The evaluator’s contract also requires evaluators to maintain strict confidentiality with respect to the whole evaluation process.
They must follow any instruction given by the RURBANIVE Consortium to ensure this. Under no circumstance may an evaluator attempt to contact an applicant on his/her own account, during the evaluation process. Confidentiality rules must be adhered to at all times before, during and after the evaluation. All external evaluators will sign a confidentiality declaration.
All evaluators must adhere to the guiding principles for independent experts set out by the EC including independence, impartiality, objectivity, accuracy and consistency.
The evaluators will be in charge of providing a neutral yet technical/scientific review of the received applications on the following aspects:
- Concept and feasibility
- Technology readiness and innovation development
- Impact & Exploitation
- Organisational capacity and sufficiency in the team’s background.
The full evaluation criteria of the open call are specified in the respective open call kit documents. In addition, the kit will be part of the evaluators’ manual.
You can check the full specifications in the “Call for evaluators” document!