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EU Rural Cooperation Fair 23 rd and 24 th September Edinburgh

EU Rural Cooperation Fair 23 rd and 24 th September Edinburgh. Community Development. Our understanding: It’s difficult to split community development projects between ‘headings’ Life in rural areas often involves complex livelihood choices. Our Community - Northumberland. Our Community.

abigail-boyd
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EU Rural Cooperation Fair 23 rd and 24 th September Edinburgh

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  1. EU Rural Cooperation Fair23rd and 24th SeptemberEdinburgh

  2. Community Development Our understanding: • It’s difficult to split community development projects between ‘headings’ • Life in rural areas often involves complex livelihood choices

  3. Our Community - Northumberland

  4. Our Community • Complex community structures and complex livelihoods ... ...lead you into making all sorts of networks • We cooperate every day with our neighbours, with our family, with the shopkeeper, with the people we do business with.

  5. What Opportunity does Leader give us? • Leader is a just an approach. • But one with a strong theoretical underpinning • It encourages us to cooperate – a natural thing for people living in rural areas • Why does Leader encourage us to cooperate? - To achieve a ‘joined up’ approach - To harness local knowledge and explore new ideas • We are challenged to think beyond simple interventions.

  6. Our experiences of cooperation • Sparked off by our commitment to Leader principles, and by the personal links and experiences within our Local Action Group • In order to support a forestry project we contacted the Swedish Rural Network and the Swedish Forestry Commission • It all got out of hand from there!

  7. What we have done? • 12 forest contractors visited Sweden • Reciprocal exploratory visits with Leader Linne area and a partnership agreement with that LAG • Three NULAG members attended Swedish Rural Parliament • Motala visited Northumberland with an exciting social services project • Innovative Umbrella Project for study visits • Basketry and Hippotherapy study visits... To hopefully lead to transnational cooperation

  8. Sweden

  9. Sweden

  10. What we got out of it • We think cooperation needs to be mutually beneficial, transparent and equitable If it’s all those three things it can be: - energising - a creative environment, - sustainable

  11. Challenges met and lessons learned • It takes time... We have personally invested a lot into preparation • We think it’s about projects cooperating but links between LAGs are also important as Leader is about leaving a legacy – to continuously improve our work with community development • Strong and successful community development relies on linking and working with communities elsewhere

  12. Conclusions • If you are involved in community development you have to make efforts to understand your own community – we think Leader is a great tool to help you do that • We cooperate every day – think globally, act locally! • Cooperation has to be mutually beneficial, transparent, equitable... and fun!

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