Rural Europe on the move English_chap7_13 | Page 51

Planting the seeds
for new projects
and movement
We have done this in many ways.
Sometimes we helped newcomers
and start-ups with training or seed
money, or provided scholarships
and exchanges to get young people
into rural development work. Our
workshops and gatherings have
birthed many new ideas and
collaborations, conversation and
shared experience planting the seeds
for new projects. Remember Jenny
from chapter 2 of this book? She
discovered Forum Synergies during
the Karditsa meeting in Greece. There
she met the Transnational Institute
(TNI) of the Netherlands with whom
she published a report a year later on
the Greek financial crisis and right to
food. “My horizon opened at that one
meeting,” she says.
Nurturing new ideas
and harvesting
the fruit
You can see how projects have their
“My horizon opened
at that one meeting”
Jenny Gkiougki
are keen to sow and breed for a new
beginnings at Forum Synergies and rural life and help resilient initiatives
then grow out into the world beyond and projects to find their feet. But we
the Karditsa event was a turning point. us. But being an incubator does not also need their feedback, inspiration
“When I came to Karditsa I was involved come without a risk. By providing and creativity so that we can stay on
with agroecology and land practices support to individuals, groups and top of what rural movements need. It
but had no idea about access to land other organisations to get active in is not easy to keep a balance between
questions. It was the conversations I rural development, we risked losing collecting knowledge about good
had with Jenny, and Titus Bahner from the necessary energies for our own practices, seeding and nurturing
Germany that sparked the idea of an core activities when we engaged in new ideas and methods and then
Irish Land Trust,” he remembers. That many new fields and networks at the harvesting the fruits of these common
organisation is very much up and same time. efforts we make for a new lively and
Or think of Eimhin Shortt, for whom
running just a year later in Ireland.
Sometimes we even felt the risk
Before Karditsa, Ireland had no of becoming superfluous, in the way
significant involvement with Forum that good teachers see their students
Synergies. We see the continuing learn to flourish without further
expansion of FS sphere of activities help. Good parents let their children
from Georgia in the East to Donegal fly when they are fledged. Forum
in the Irish – and European – far North Synergies has learnt to let its offspring
West. In 2019 we have found five new run when their time has come.
Irish hosts for the 2019 scholarships,
including Eimhin’s own ‘Growery’.
However teachers, parents and civic
organisations are not the same. We
sustainable rural Europe. This is a call
to all to keep in touch!
OPPOSITE
1. FS logo
2. Rural Ukraine
THIS PAGE
3. Eimhin (with cap) in the
ERSG 2017 in Greece
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