Leader

Leader is a part of Aktion Ostrobothnia´s developmentprogramme to rural areas. We focus on challenges how to make our livingareas attractive, keep our enterprisers active and full employment in our rural areas. We want to make it easier for you to keep and create new jobopportunities .

The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry chose 55 Leader-actiongroups for the programmeperiod 2007-2013. The Leader activity is financed with funds from the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development EAFRD and with national funds.

The Leader-dimension is a tailored instrument which offers the inhabitants, societies and companies of rural areas an opportunity to affect the development of the their own area. A local actiongroup (LAG) is a registered society which activates people in the rural areas to develop their native district, increase the comfort and create new employmentopportunities and establish new companies.

The aim of the actiongroups is to develop the rural areas by financing local developmentprojects and subsidizing companies. The subsidizing is meant for small and newly started companies. The projects can be about developing industry, villages and environment, environmental and industrial education for young people and international activity.

The public financingquota (Eu+ state share+municipality share) to the local actiongroup in the swedishspeaking Ostrobothnia, the municipalities from Karleby to Kristinestad, is 6 800 000 euros during 2007-2013.

The inhabitants and local societies can apply for financing in these areas to different projects those develop the rural areas. The board of the actiongroup chooses the projects which are interesting enough to be financed. The TE-center (Industry and employment center) inspects the legality of the projects and does the final decision about the subsidy.