The Kojakovice Project, how it all started
From the very beginning, the Society has been a partner of the Greenways Prague Vienna. We were trying to set up a small museum in the former school in the village of Kojakovice and help restore some of the Jewish cemeteries in the region, with donations from Greenways visitors. In 1999, when touring the region with representatives of the Greenways group and the Rockefeller Brother Fund (RBF), a chance-meeting took place in the village of Kojakovice with the mayor of the Jilovice Municipality. Taking Kojakovice as example, we discussed the lack of possibilities in small villages, resulting in an outflow of people and further degradation of the region.
Left: the former school, already more than 30 years empty and without maintenance.
Right: lack of resources is showing in the deplorable exterior of most houses. Interior facilities are mostly still pre-1940.
As final result of this discussion, the Rockefeller Brother Fund awarded the Society a three-year grant (totaling 120,000 USD) as starting fund (seed money) in November 2000, to develop the Kojakovice Center and to help a sustainable economic redevelopment of this rural region while also helping to preserve its natural and cultural heritage. Public involvement and strengthening the non-profit sector in the region should form an important part of the project mission.
Left: at our first community meeting, locals unanimously supported giving the old school in use to our Society
Right: repairs on top of a sketch used in earlier exhibitions.
The grant enabled the Society to pay for its initial operating costs and to run activities for which no other funding was available. In addition, part of this grant was used as matching fund or pre-financing for projects co-funded by Czech or European sources. This strategy enabled the Society to more than triple the funds provided by the RBF. In the first five years, the Society had a total turnover of well over $ 400 000, with close to an additional $ 150,000 USD in approved but yet unpaid grants for the coming years.
Three different projects all aiming for the same goal: getting young people involved in heritage
conservation
and giving them a wider view on life and a better change on employment.
Each of the individual projects contributed to achieving one or more of the objectives of the Kojakovice Project and the mission of the Society.
Today, the Kojakovice Peasant and Emigration Museum is the main center of our Ecomuseum Ruze concept (see ecomuseum pages). The place is not only a museum but also functions as a visitor information center on activities in the region and education center for traditional home crafts. It is our "public visit card"; a place where theory and practice come together and where visitors, locals, and scholars meet and exchange experiences and stories.
