Capacity Building Across Higher Education and Rural Youth in WINnovators Space

Abstract

This paper demonstrates the Design as a Hypothesis Framework for developing cross-university students and mentors, and rural youth (aged 18–30) and regional business ecosystems capacity building practice approaches to support sustainable development goals. We describe how a gamified learning and co-working WINnovators Space (https://winnovators-space.eu/) with e-learning materials for self-learning and mentored group work problem based challenges was developed to support university students’, mentors and the business partners’ engagement and building agency and capacity with regional rural young women. The Pilot study with the capacity building practice application validates the Design Hypothesis in three countries – Estonia (N = 35), Slovenia (N28), Serbia (N22) – involving young rural women, higher education students, academic and business mentors.