Strategy for the PREPSOIL's communication, dissemination, exploitation

The Mission “A Soil Deal for Europe” states that the lack of knowledge and awareness of the cruciality of long-term soil health among different stakeholders - land managers, industries, consumers and society at large - is a major driver of soil degradation, affecting its capacity to provide ecosystem services. Therefore, raising awareness and knowledge on soil health will contribute to a successful Mission in two ways: firstly, more people will identify themselves as soil stewards, and managers and secondly, authorities will have the necessary knowledge to improve soil practices and implement effective actions.

The PREPSOIL (Preparing for the "Soil Deal for Europe" Mission) project facilitates the deployment of the Mission across European regions. This will be achieved through the co-creation and roll out of tools and spaces for interaction, knowledge-sharing and co-learning, as well as stocktaking and dialogue to understand how regional assessment of soil needs, supported by harmonised monitoring mechanisms, can then lead to action in living labs and light houses for soil health.

The overall objective of “WP1 Dissemination, exploitation, communication and stakeholder management” is to address dissemination, exploitation and communication of the project at all levels and through multiple modalities to ensure the PREPSOIL objectives and impacts are achieved. To assure this, an effective and efficient communication, dissemination and stakeholder engagement strategy & plan is defined in this document. The document also contains an actionable communication plan with feasible KPIs and which describes all the outreach activities that will be performed to support engagement with stakeholders.

The document is divided in specific activity sections.

• Section 1 describes the importance of increasing soil awareness & soil literacy in Europe and mentions the different PREPSOIL objectives to support the “A Soil Deal for Europe” mission;
• Section 2 provides an overview how of the general PREPSOIL communication, dissemination and exploitation will be distributed during the project time-frame;
• Section 3 describes the PREPSOIL stakeholders and results to be delivered by the end of project;
• Section 4 states the general communication strategy that PREPSOIL wants to develop the project, with details by communication channel and format;
• Section 5 is focused on exploitation, with some first highlights to be explored in future releases of this deliverable;
• Section 6 has the conclusion of the document, with info when the next release will be available. 

The successful implementation of the plan depends on the active support of PREPSOIL partners and progress will be monitored through virtual WP meetings organised by Work Package 1 (WP). The quality of the technical, scientific and content-related work that will be developed by the other WPs during the project time frame is also an important aspect to support the successful communication, dissemination and exploitation plan.