Rural Europe on the move English_E_version_all | Page 131

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 127