The Cooperative Agreement Approach (CAA) was tested and implemented in most of the projects executed in Vital Rural Area and used as common standard for public private partnership. It consists of two main steps:
- The gathering together all potential partners in the region (local, regional, public, private, different sectors, knowledge institutes).
- 2) Facilitating a process based on respecting responsibilities and knowledge that brings together energy, creativity and budgets (EU, public, private).
This results in a shared development strategy for the region, forming the basis for integrated and sustainable new solutions and efficient use of budgets and resources.
The CAA has proved itself as a process instrument that ensures sustainable project implementation, including a methodology for complete assessment of the results and the participation of different groups of stakeholders. Moreover, the CAA offers a framework to help new rural alliances emerge and is the basis for innovative approaches.
The approach is shown in the diagram below.
