Regional Development
The Rozmberk Society works mainly in eastern South Bohemia, historically one of the poorer agricultural regions of the Czech Republic. Like most European and American rural areas, our rural operating area has experienced an outflow of especially young people and families to more urban areas. Relocations and centralized planning under the previous communist regime hastened and strengthened that proces.
The area used to depend only on agriculture. Today, studies show that this is not possible anymore. In contrast to expectations, accession to the European Union did not improve that situation. As result, these areas have an over-representation of elderly and a relative high number of low-educated unemployed. Many of the small villages cannot offer any job opportunity and are without facilities like schools, full-time shops, and restaurants, with only a few small towns having better facilities.
The best chances for a successfull regional economy lay in developing a combination of small-scale specialized agriculture (aiming for quality, green mark), specialized soft tourism, and small-scale industry and enerprises.
The region has a strong background for developing eco-, agro- and cultural tourism:
- The unique and internationally recognized wetlands and the nature-like large and century-old artificial fish ponds form an important part of the region's attraction.
- The region also used to be part of the buffer zone for the Iron Curtain along the Austrian border. This has halted many industrial activities and renewal in this region, preserving much of the old infra structure, houses, and even equipment.
- Most important, the visitors are already coming close to our operating area. Cesky Budejovice and Krumlov are getting over a million visiters per year, Trebon and nearby Jindrichuv Hradec up to and over 100 000. All of these places are less than 30 miles from our main operating area.
Developing these resources and restructuring the regional economy has to be achieved in a manner that sustains the region’s environmental and cultural integrity and attributes.
The Society has always been active in this field, both through our own projects and as partners or coordinators in larger projects and activities. These include regional and European Union projects, involving also local and regional authorities, non-profits, for-profits, and education institutions.
This page will be updated further soon.
Here will come a short list of all our projects and their aims and links to further information.
MNEMOSYNE
MNEMOSYNE was an EU-funded project coordinated by the Italian town of Torremagiore and included parters from Great Britain,
