Description
The project “Wake up, villages!” based on the dynamic situation of municipalities. By the beginnig of 2014 the municipality reform is on the planning phase. Changes in local municipalities means that villages as communities should be stronger and prepared for professional advocacy. During the project there will be selected 12 experienced village elders/leaders as mentors and 12 less experienced village elders/leaders as mentees. Cooperation between them, mentoring program, common study-tour and trainings are the main activities to encourage village elders to represent themselves clearly and more visibly in society. Project lasts 18 month and participants of the project will be a part of the key persons during Estonian Rural Parliament in August 2015. Project expected to achieve better advocacy by village societies themselves and better advocacy of overall village movement in the rural, national and international level. Project partner is Association of Municipalities of Estonia.
Summary of project results
A mentoring program. Mentors, mentees and active members of the village and municipality officials took part from the project activities. Sharing experience and good practises become very common. Also different co-operational possibilities and financing schemes between municipalities and villages where discussed, analysed and developed. Mentors helped to initiate village round-tables at the municipalities of the mentees. Different topics become important: providing public services, sustainable maintaining village houses; developing statute of the village elders and transparent financing schemes at the municipalities. Database was created to incorporate all collected data about village elders into one online system to have better overview about village movement and avoid loss of data. During the project, information were collected from the webpages of the municipalities to analyze their knowledge and attitude towards village movement. New technical solution pointed out that Kodukant has to analyze to whom the collect the information and for what. Also, Kodukant has to specify the meaning of village elder, village society etc
Summary of bilateral results