1) Kojakovice
Peasant Museum and Information Center (Kojakovice Center).
In the year 2001, the
activities around the Kojakovice Center progressed rapidly and successfully.
In 2000, the municipality of Jilovice, to which Kojakovice belongs, and the
people from Kojakovice agreed to rent the former school in Kojakovice to the
Society, free of charge, to house the Kojakovice Peasant Museum and
Information Center. Repairs of the more than 25 years empty and neglected
building started in February 2001 and ground floor repairs were completed in
May. The Center was operational and fully equipped with furniture, computer
room with Internet access, information office, and two rooms with
exhibitions in time of the opening on June 2.
The opening of the Center
was organized as a 2-day meeting of families and friends of Kojakovice, in
close collaboration with the villagers and municipality. Approximately 450
people visited the event, including an 8-person delegation from Sister City
Oxford Junction, Iowa, USA. The villagers and regional stakeholders
responded very positively and expressed support for the Center. In
preparation of the opening event, many villagers made repairs to the facades
of their farms, significantly improving the appearance of this protected
village.
Repairs and refurbishing of the building and the opening event were realized with help of grants of the
Rockefeller Brother Fund, EU-PHARE (through the municipality of Jilovice),
PHARE-Ministry of Regional Development CR (through Association Ruze), Nadace
Open Society Fund Prague, and the people from Kojakovice and surrounding
villages.
In the six main holiday
weeks of the summer of 2001, over 730 people visited the Center, not
counting the regular visits of locals and daily presence of local children.
2) Community Activities
Locals often come in for a
short talk or to look at new things in the Center or bring new exponates.
Children from Kojakovice and neighboring villages regularly come to use the
computers. They do use Internet and write homework on the computers, but
mainly they come to play games. We decided to allow this, since it attracts
the children to the Center on a regular basis and help build their interest
in our activities and their skills in use of computers and languages. We
have provided a short, elementary course on computer use to those children.
Our staff member
responsible for Kojakovice already had an ongoing collaboration with the
Municipality and the Jilovice School on providing simple courses in ceramics
and organizing other activities for children. We have incorporated those
activities into her work, and extended on that. In collaboration with the
Jilovice School, courses on traditional lace making for children have
started recently; we will also provide courses for adults later in the year,
financed by the Czech Ministry of Culture.
3) Sister City Partnership
Oxford Junction is a small
town in Iowa, USA, and established 130 years ago. Of the 160 families that
live in the town, 101 are of Czech origin and 56 are from Kojakovice and
other villages in the vicinity. Facilitated by the Society, the
municipalities and people of Jilovice and Oxford Junction agreed to
establish a Sister City Partnership focusing on the shared history and
ancestry, on youth exchanges, and on ways how to fight in particular youth
unemployment. An 8-person delegation of Oxford Junction visited Kojakovice
at the time of the opening, when a partnership contract was signed. A
counter visit took place in September. Both visits were successful and
received with great enthusiasm, and municipalities of Borovany and Jilovice
and the people from Oxford Junction collected donations covering most of the
expenses for the return visit.
4) Greenways program
The
Society is now a certified partner of the Greenways-Zelene stezky program of
the Environmental Partnership. Tourists on the Prague-Vienna Greenway
visited the Jewish Heritage Project and specially the Kojakovice Center. The
Greenways program is an important factor for the further development of the
Center and especially for the development of sustainable tourism and
cultural heritage conservation in the region. Donations from and cooperation
with the Greenway program play a significant role in the realization of the
Society’s mission.
5) Ecomuseum “Landscape of the 5-petaled Rose” and Greenways
“Rozmberk Heritage Trail”
The
Polish Environmental Partnership coordinates the project “Establishing a
Visegrad network of “Eco-museums” for restoring and maintaining living
heritage at the local level in Central Europe”, funded by the
International Visegrad Fund. An eco-museum is based on the concept of
creating a “museum without walls”. Nature, culture and history are
interpreted in situ, involving the local community and displaying the
highlights through, for example, stories, special sites, trails, monuments,
and other symbols. The interaction between nature and people is emphasized.
The Society and its regional partners are discussing a joint strategy to
conserve the cultural heritage of, and attract soft tourism to our region. A
part of this strategy would be to connect the highlights of this region in a
new Greenways under the name “Rozmberk regional heritage trail”. The
call of the Environmental Partnership consortium coincided with the
discussion and helped focus the strategy. The Society prepared the joint
application that was submitted by the Association Ruze. The proposal was
selected as one of the 4-6 Czech potential pilot cases. The Society will
continue to coordinate the development of both the new Greenways and the
Ecomuseum.
6) MNEMOSYNE
The Society is a partner for MNEMOSYNE, is a
transnational project recently approved by the EU. The Italian partner
coordinates the project, other partner are from the UK, Spain, Bulgaria and
Lithuania. The project envisions re-valuating and exploiting the richness in
local history and cultural heritage and fight unemployment and social
exclusion. This should be done through creating local centers for
"History, Arts and Culture" and also through events and
conservation activities. The project should raise appreciation in the local
people for their heritage and help transfer knowledge about this between
generations. Conserving and exploiting the local cultural heritage creates
new economic opportunities and jobs. Paramount to the project is to involve
and train unemployed or socio-economic disadvantaged groups (low educated
unemployed youth, woman returning to labor market, minorities, etc.) to
take advantage of these opportunities.
This
project is not a new direction of the Society, but complements and
strengthens our activities for the Ecomuseum and Greenways, and for
supporting SMEs and developing other economic activities in the region.
7) Migration and Intercultural Relationships, Challenges for Schools
Today.
Emigration
from our operating area to the USA is a permanent focal point of the
exhibitions in the Kojakovice Center. It is our intention to link this
exhibition with educational activities about historic and contemporary
migration and involve regional schools. The Society established a Czech
partnership to join an existing EU Minerva project on Migration and
Intercultural Relationships; a cooperation between educational institutions
in Norway, Portugal and Northern Ireland. This Minerva project is being
enlarged into a Socrates Comenius Network incorporating additional countries
into the project. A first proposal to that effect was rejected, but
resubmitted this year for funding in 2002. The Czech partnership comprises
the Society, three local and regional schools, and the Pedagogical Faculty,
JCU. The Society and the Czech-English Gymnasium, Ceske Budejovice, will
jointly coordinate the Czech partnership for this project.
8) EU Youth for Europe Exchange “Critical Consumption”.
The
Society participated in an Italian-coordinated EU Youth for Europe exchange
project on critical consumption and consumer awareness. As result, 10
participants from our region went to Italy for a 10-day youth exchange,
meeting similar groups from Italy, Bulgaria, Spain and Belgium. The groups
discussed topics of alternative methods of farming, fair trade,
consciousness consuming, and ethical finance. They met with local
authorities and experts on the mentioned topics, participated in an
information market and visited farms and other small-scale and environmental
friendly producers.
Next
year the same organizations will submit a joint proposal for a next Youth
Exchange. This time the topic will focus on the possibilities to develop or
safeguard small scale and alternative methods of farming in the New
Association Countries (in line for EU membership) as opposed to the
intensive, large-scale farming often found in the EU. If approved, the
exchange will take place in the Czech Republic in 2002, with the Society as
main organizer.
Restoration of Jewish Cultural Heritage in South Bohemia
With all attention
focused on developing the Kojakovice project, the Society does not have
sufficient human resources and funding to further develop the Jewish
Heritage project. It is unclear how long this will continue; the Society
decided that for the moment continuation of the regional development
activities and in particular creating new jobs has a higher priority