"Bocholter Aa" is again LEADER region

Future-oriented projects in the Bocholter-Aa region will be supported by the LEADER funding program with 2.7 million euros in the coming years until 2027. This is the result of a competition in which committed people from Bocholt, Borken, Isselburg, Rhede and Velen participated between October 2021 and March 2022.

LEADER stands for "Liaison Entre Actions de Développement de l'Économie Rurale" (French for "Links of Actions for the Development of the Rural Economy"). This is a support program of the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development, in which the state of North Rhine-Westphalia also participates with up to 20 percent of the funding.

"Many committed people have worked on the new strategy over the past few months," says Borken Mayor Mechtild Schulze Hessing, who is currently chairwoman of the supporting association in the LEADER region Bocholter Aa. She is therefore very pleased that "the result has also convinced the competition jury and will now be the basis for a tailored LEADER process along the Bocholter Aa."

The Bocholter Aa region has been involved in LEADER since 2008. Since then, projects with a total funding volume of around 4.5 million euros have been implemented in the five participating municipalities.

In the next LEADER funding phase, the focus will be on the topics of "resilience" and "resource protection" and on the following questions, for example: How can LEADER projects help to increase the region's resilience to external influences and crises? What new value chains are needed to achieve this? Which LEADER projects can help to reduce resource consumption and contribute to climate and environmental protection in the region?

Programs from 45 regions to receive funding

In total, projects in 45 regions across the country will receive funding of around 120 million euros from the LEADER program in the upcoming funding period. At its core, the program is about adapting to the challenges in rural areas resulting, for example, from global crises such as climate change, the impairment of supply and supply chains, or even from megatrends such as digitization.