Rethinking Rural: Introducing the SDG Rural Lab
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Rural Lab is an innovative initiative from the University of Zaragoza (UNIZAR) that brings social innovation and the 2030 Agenda into rural and peri-urban territories. It connects academic expertise with local communities to co-create solutions for sustainable development through participatory research and citizen science.
Since 2019, the ODS Rural Lab has operated under the Chair for Development Cooperation at UNIZAR, and now the Chair for Solidarity and Global Citizenship in collaboration with the Provincial Council of Zaragoza (DPZ) and the Aragonese Federation for Solidarity (FAS). The project promotes local ownership of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by fostering community-based diagnosis, reflection, and action.
Through a methodology grounded in Participatory Action Research (PAR), each Rural Lab acts as a living social lab where local actors –associations, youth, elders, schools, municipalities– engage in collective diagnosis and design actions aligned with the SDGs, turning global goals into local agendas.
🎯 Main Objectives
The project is structured around three core goals:
Promote spaces for dialogue, co-creation, and participatory learning around the SDGs at the local level.
Identify global challenges as they are expressed locally, through SDG-based community diagnoses.
Develop and validate a transferable methodology for working on sustainable development in rural contexts.
Among the specific objectives:
Stimulate social dynamization in rural areas.
Involve diverse population groups in identifying problems and designing solutions.
Co-design and implement community-based initiatives.
Document and disseminate findings to promote transferability.
🌍 Linked SDGs
While each lab focuses on different local priorities, the ODS Rural Labs are conceptually anchored in several key Sustainable Development Goals:
SDG 4: Quality Education – by promoting both formal and informal learning about sustainable development (target 4.7).
SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities – by addressing rural-urban disparities in rights and services.
SDG 11: Sustainable Communities – by strengthening the resilience and sustainability of rural areas.
SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals – through intersectoral collaboration between academia, civil society, and local institutions.
Depending on local needs, other SDGs may become central, such as SDG 5 (Gender Equality), SDG 13 (Climate Action), or SDG 8 (Decent Work).
🧪 A Living Lab for Education and Transfer
The ODS Rural Lab also functions as an interdisciplinary teaching innovation project, involving students and faculty from diverse UNIZAR departments. It promotes service-learning, experiential learning (T2 practices), and dialogue between academic and territorial knowledge.
In 2023 the project was awarded by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) and the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP) in 2023 as a best practice in global citizenship education.
The Rural Social Innovation Lab (ODS Rural Lab) conducts participatory action research in five different areas of the province of Zaragoza and two international locations. As a teaching innovation project (PISOC_UNIZAR), it is an interdisciplinary project involving different faculties and programs. It leverages the project context for classroom (T2) practices and analyzes the challenges of implementing the 2030 Agenda in rural areas. This project seeks to explore potential links with the objectives of the UNITA project, highlighting the work developed in the Aragonese context and generating a dialogue of knowledge about international rural contexts in the territories participating in the UNITA project.
Under the 2024-2025 PISOC UNIZAR initiative , the ODS Rural Lab is exploring its connection with the UNITA European alliance, aiming to foster rural cooperation and knowledge exchange across borders.