Building on local knowledge in Sjuhärad LEADER+, Southern Sweden
• Great competition from the Gothenburg
area on the west coast of Sweden. Our
area is just 100 km outside Gothenburg.
Everybody knows Gothenburg, but who’s
heard about Sjuhärad-? For us it’s very
important to build up our own profile, so
that it will be possible to market our area
to others - even for those coming to
Gothenburg.
• High expenses for community running.
How did you find or choose the members
of your LAG?
The area of Sjuhärad includes seven
communities. These communities are
organised under the local federation of local
authorities of Sjuhärad. In 1999 the
federation decided that Sjuhärad wanted to
try to participate in the LEADER+ program.
In the beginning of 2000 they called different
information meetings and everybody was
welcome to these meetings. Participants on
the meetings decided that LEADER+ is
interesting for our area. About 50 people
were interested to continue and to work with
the LEADER+ application. All three sectors
were represented from the beginning. Nearly
all members of the LAG were chosen from
the “application writing group”. Our LAG
members are nearly the same since we
started in the year 2000. Only some of the
private sector “jumped off”. Today we are
working with “headhunting methods” to
get new members if there is a free place in
the LAG.
Sassi Wemmer, member of LAG Sjuhärad
and consulting resource person for
environmental projects financed by
Sjuhärad LEADER+, talks to Jenny Turner
by email and telephone!
Sassi has been involved in LEADER since
the idea of applying for a programme for
Sjuhärad arose in 1999, before this he was
involved in the ‘Village Movement’ - small
groups of villagers get together to plan the
development of their village. There are
‘Village Movement’ groups all over Sweden,
dating back to the 50s; in the Sjuhärad area
there are 130. Sjuhärad is a historical name:
if you split up the name into "sju" and
"härad" the name can be translated into
"seven" and "county", which means, that
Sjuhärad is "the area of seven counties".
Even today seven communities are
organised under The Local Federation of
Local Authorities of Sjuhärad and you can
see that the historical events have an
influence on the political organisation and
society structure. The ‘Village Movement’ is a
great resource for LEADER+ but Sassi
explains that the membership is aging and
they have problems engaging young people.
Sassi’s background is in research into watermanagement; he is currently engaged in
studies into the management of the lakes
and rivers, which he integrates with
community development. This research is
done at a private consulting company where
Sassi is one of the owners.
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Maybe it will be interesting for you to know
about our LAG’s composition:
What are the main problems for rural
communities in your area of Sjuhärad?
• Communication: There are problems
especially for the transport sector. The
railway and road network isn’t that welldeveloped. People in the country side
haven’t access to fast IT connections.
• Borås - our “region town” with 100 000
inhabitants - isn’t that strong in economic
growth-sustaining factor compared with
other towns having a university college.
• Some important economic growth sectors
such as electronics, medical and
pharmaceutical industries are underrepresented.
• Low educational level of people in the area
compared with other similar areas.
• Low level of housing construction leads to
housing shortage and problems for people
who want to settle down in the area.
• 2 people from The Local Federation of
Local Authorities of Sjuhärad (one
politician and one employee)
• 5 community members (one politician and
four employees)
• 1 politician from The Region of Västra
Götaland
• 6 from village movement organisations
• 1 from The Rural Economy and
Agricultural Societies
• 1 from 4H Youth organisation
• 5 from small scale enterprises (privately
owned companies)
• 1 from The Federation of Private
Enterprises
• 1 youth representative less than 25
years old
• 1 from The Federation of Swedish farmers
How do the members of your LAG use
their local knowledge to benefit your
local area?
All members of the LAG are very engaged in
the work with LEADER+. We have meetings
once a month plus different strategy
meetings in different workgroups as well as
further education for the LAG members.
Most of the LAG members are engaged in
several organisations working with rural
development. All our projects have contact
persons from the LAG. The contact persons´
responsibility is to build up a link between
the project and the LAG as well as these
persons are “network builders” between
different projects.
You say in your leaflet that you want to
have entire villages participating in rural
development; how will you go about
making this a reality?
We started a framework project owned by
the LAG to give the possibility to 40 village
development groups to work with the future
development in a small area. They are forced
to co-operate with the community and the
local business sector. During the project
period (8 month) they are looking at the
historical development of the own village,
including social structure, industries,
companies, environmental development,
cultural events and so on. They are also
analysing the strong and weak sides of the
village and had to try to give examples how
to solve problems to get more strength to
the local area. We (the LAG) will, after we got
all the new village development plans, look if
there are some special methods we can use
further on to develop other areas. We can
even use the results to show how it works
using the cross sectoral LEADER partnership
method.
Why do you think LEADER is particularly
good for your area? Does it make a
special contribution?
It’s the first time for us that the local actors
got the possibility to decide how to develop
their own area. In Sjuhärad the LAG is
responsible for all project-funding. We
needn’t ask someone else if it’s ok to start
up new projects. It’s up to the LAG to decide
how to spend the money. LEADER+ is the
injection to our area to start up new
processes and new co-operations. The
LEADER+ program speeds up the process,
forces us to co-operate and to think in a new
way. Another interesting thing is that it is the
first time that village movement
organisations, the business sector and
communities are sitting around the same
table at the same time to decide what is best
for the area.
You are very clear about wanting to
create innovative solutions, especially in
respect of employment opportunities and
business concepts, how difficult is it to
achieve this?
It’s very difficult! Next year we will start a
reference group for the business sector. They
will act as an information group and will work
with mobilisation methods in our LEADER
area to start up different sustainable business
concepts. The group will have some kind of
advisory status for our LAG as well.
Your group states clearly that it will give
young people and immigrants a platform
in society, how have you approached
this task?
Another framework project will be started by
our LAG in January next year focusing on
young people. Every community area (we
have 7) is responsible for “getting” a person
between 17 and 21 to start up a youth
group. One of these 7 youth will be a
member of the LAG as well. The youth group
will meet 4 times a year and will have
advisory status for the LAG in all questions
handling about youth. The group gets their
own budget so they can initiate own
projects. For projects up to 2000 Euros the
youth group can decide by themselves.
Naturally there are some rules: project
owners must be younger then 25, no
money for ordinary, day-to-day activities.
What message would you send to UK
LEADER+ groups?
Think LEADER! Act LEADER! Be LEADER!
Start all processes from bottom-up and with
“sector-crossing” co-operation. It’s much
easier to succeed and to change opinions if
you implement new things in that way.
Don’t shy away from “crazy” projects.
Allow yourself and others to fail sometimes but analyse why you failed. Learn and get a
winning team!
If you would like to find out more about
LEADER+ in Sjuhärad, contact:
Sassi Wemmer
LAG LEADER+ Sjuhärad,
Environmental and rural development,
Kärnåsenvägen 9,
SE-51796 HULTAFORS,
Sweden.
Tel: +46 70 216 72 18
Email: [email protected]
Calling all LAG Members:
Coming soon UK LEADER+ Network Event especially
for LAG Members and Directors.
‘Valuing Local Knowledge'
April 2004 Midlands, England
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