Annual Report 2004

 

Introduction
The Rozmberk Society was established in April 1998 as a public benefit corporation for heritage conservation combined with regional development. Our main operating area covers most of the Trebon Basin, comprising the mostly flat, rural fishpond region in the eastern part of South Bohemia, Czech Republic. With a surface of about 1,100 square kilometers (430 sq. miles), the region harbors approximately 48,000 inhabitants in 50 villages and small towns. 

I. Activities and Projects in 2004

1. Kojakovice Peasant Museum and Information Center

Since 2001, the Society operates a small museum and information center in the former school of the protected village of Kojakovice. The Center was open during weekends from April until October 2004 and full-time from June until 1 October. The Center was also opened on request outside hours to visitor groups, in particular from the Greenways program.

The exhibition about the history of emigration to the USA was further extended as part of two EU projects on historic and contemporary migration.

Around 2000 people visited the Center. The special event weekends attracted another 900 people to Kojakovice and our new location in Nove Hrady.

2. Nove Hrady Blacksmith Shop and Information Center

Last year, the municipality Nove Hrady completed the restoration of its historic blacksmith workshop. This workshop is located near the gates of the Old Castle and in the past provided services to both the community and the nobility.

Blacksmith Daniel Cerny obtained the lease for the workshop as part of the town efforts to get traditional crafts back. The Rozmberk Society cooperates with Daniel Cerny and the municipality in this effort. The blacksmith workshop is open top public, and the Society arranged expositions about blacksmith traditions in the region.

In addition, several public actions were organized there, in particular with Easter and Christmas.
In the future, the Society will continue to promote the blacksmith workshop as key element in its planned Traditional Craft Network and the Ecomuseum Ruze. 
   

3. The Kojakovice Project

In November 2000, The Rockefeller Brother Fund (RBF), USA, provided a three-year grant (totaling 120,000 USD) to the Society as starting fund 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 form an important part of the project mission.

The grant enabled the Society to pay for its 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 almost triple the funds provided by the RBF.

In the period 2001-2004, the Society had a total turnover of over 391 000 USD (exchange rate 31 December 2004), with close to an additional 235,000 USD in approved but yet unpaid grants for the coming years. Each of the individual projects contributes to achieving one or more of the objectives of the Kojakovice Project and the mission of the Society   
    

4. Non-profit Organizations on the Way to the European Union.

Non-profit Organizations on the Way to the European Union is the name of a large project run by the Foundation Open Society Fund (OSF) from Prague. The project aims to educate selected NGOs active in Human Resource Development, Rural Development, and the Development in Tourism on the new possibilities for funding from the EU Structural Funds, which became available after the Czech Republic entered the EU in May 2004. In addition, the NGOs obtained a grant to design and prepare a project application to be submitted under the new EU Structural and Social Funds Program Czech Republic in 2004 or 2005.

The Society was selected with its project concept "Setting Up a Business Incubator for Traditional Crafts in the Trebonsko and Novohradsko Areas". Staff of the Society participated in workshops on EU funding and proposal design.  The actual proposal was refined throughout the project and renamed "Se zručnými řemeslníky do EU" (literal "With skillful artisans into the EU").

In 2004 the Czech Government decided to offer an additional round of project grants within the EU PHARE program (preparation to EU accession), to compensate for the delayed start of the EU Structural Funds program in the Czech Republic after the accession in May 2004. In consultation with the OSF team, we opted to adapt our proposal toward the PHARE grant program. This has two significant advantages. Paramount is that the PHARE 2003 program project provides a 100% grant against only 75% for the EU Structural Funds. As important, the PHARE program pays in advance (only VAT has to be pre-financed), whereas the EU Structural Funds pay afterwards after approving the project expenditure. With the low possibilities of borrowing money to pre-finance projects by all but the biggest institutions or organizations, this EU program is increasingly in risk of being of little use for rural regional development.   

Even with the help from the OSF team and their consultants, preparing and adapting our proposal took a considerable amount of time for two persons.

The Proposal with a budget of 126 000 EUR was submitted in August 2004. The Society received information that the project was accepted under the PHARE program at the end of December. Preparing and signing the contract will take place early 2005; the project will start in March 2005 and run for 15 month.  

5. Project Ecomuseum Ruze and Greenways “Rozmberk Rural Heritage Trail

The Society continues to coordinate regional efforts to develop the Ecomuseum Ruze. An eco-museum is based on the idea of drawing attention to an area, creating a “museum without walls”. Nature, culture and history are interpreted in situ" through story telling, education trails, monuments, and other symbols. The interaction between nature and people is emphasized and local people should be actively involved. The Society plans to link the different heritage highlights of our region with special trails within the planned Greenways loop Rozmberk Heritage.

In May 2004, the Society joined with representatives of other Ecomuseums from the Czech Republic, Poland and Sweden to participate in a first pan-European workshop on Ecomuseums. The workshop Long Networks, Ecomuseums in Europe was organized and hosted by the Italian Trento province.  This is the next step in the effort not only to establish ecomuseums in the Czech Republic but also find support for these efforts through international cooperation. 

The Society is a certified partner of the Greenways-Zelene stezky program of the Czech Environmental Partnership (Nadace Partnerstvi). Environmental Partnership and regional partners established the separate Civic Association Greenways Prague-Vienna to specifically manage this Greenway. The Society has been appointed Member of the Board of the Association.  Further development of our planned regional Greenways loop "Rozmberk Heritage" will continue within the activities of the Association.

The Association has been preparing and submitted an application for EU funding for the entire Greenway and its loops. Unfortunately, at the time this Annual Report was made, it had become clear that these applications were not approved.
    

6. Local crafts as cultural heritage of villages

This year the Society received a grant of the Province of South Bohemia to make a small exhibition about local blacksmith traditions and organize a local blacksmithing event presenting this heritage in the historic blacksmith shop in Nove Hrady.

Such small-grant events, exhibitions, and craft weekends are part of our efforts to collect data about the local development and interpretation of specific crafts and raise awareness about these crafts. As important, we use these actions to offer young artisans the possibility to present and demonstrate their work and help them to sell their products.

These activities form the basis and first steps to create a craft network of sustainable craft shops open to public, which will form the core and highlight of the envisioned Ecomuseum Ruze and Rozmberk Heritage trail
    

7. Migration and Intercultural Relations, Challenges for Schools Today

Migration and Intercultural Relationships, challenges for schools today" (MIR) is a EU Socrates Comenius III 3-year Thematic Network project started in 2002, (see previous Annual Reports and under www.migrationhistory.com). The main objective of the project is to establish a web-supported framework for effective collaboration between different types of research and education institutions in the fields of Migration (Past and Present) and Intercultural Relations.

Within the Czech group, the Society is conducting research on historic migration from our region and creating a digital, web-accessible database about this.

In October, the Czech group organized the EU Socrates In-Service Training Course "Migration and Intercultural Relations" (www.migrationhistory.com/inservice) in Ceske Budejovice, October 18-22. The event was also used as a Socrates Contact Seminar enabling teachers of different schools to meet and try establish collaborations for future Socrates education projects. MIR partners and teachers of numerous schools throughout Europe attended the course, which was the fourth in the series on this topic. 

The Society also assisted the Jilovice Elementary School in preparing a Comenius I school-to-school project proposal under the title "Investigating Yesterday's Emigration - Understanding Today's migration". Because of a reduction in the number of classes from 9 (age 6-15) to 5 (age 6-11) and management changes, this proposal had to be abandoned. Like previous years, the thematic summer camps for pupils continued around the themes of migration and discovery of different cultures, countries, and continents.
    

8. EMILE:  Leaving Europe for America – early EMIgrants LEtter stories.

The period 1840 through 1920 was one of great changes in Europe. One of its results was a large emigration from throughout Europe to the young United States. The first years as immigrants were, for almost everybody, years of severe hardships in many ways.

A source for learning and understanding of the immigrants’ situations is the ”America letters”; letters the immigrants wrote to the people left behind in their old country. These letters are important parts of the common European history. Nowadays the situation is the opposite, when Europe is hosting immigrants from other parts of the world. Giving voice to the experiences of the early European emigrants in America is one way of linking the history and the present and creating understanding for the new immigrants.

The Society is partner in the Swedish-coordinated transnational project EMILE:  Leaving Europe for America – early EMIgrants LEtter stories. The 1-year project is funded under the EU Culture 2000 program and started in September 2004.

The main aim of the EMILE project will be to study and compare that part of our common history as told in letters from America written by early European emigrants. The project will be a joint transnational study on emigration history from individual points of view found in letters and other personal documents.

The Society started to collect and translated emigrant letters from our region and increased its investigations into emigration as part of this project.
    

9. DEFRA project "Helping Czech Schools Entering the International Eco-School Program

Rural schools in South Bohemia seldom enter international projects, and environmental education has a low priority. The International Eco-school Program (IEP) of the Federation Of Environmental Education (FEE, Great Britain) can become an easy entrance for Czech rural schools into both environmental and international education.

Until now, Czech schools were not involved in the IEP, and there is no coordinated effort to involve in particular rural schools in environmental education. The Society obtained a grant from the British Department of Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA, Environmental Assistance Fund) to help schools join this program.

Unfortunately, the FEE arbritrarily rejected the application of the Society, citing lack of track record and long-term financial support. The latter is considered needed since membership fees amount to well over 5 000 USD annually without direct return benefits. Efforts to make an exemption to allow at least the schools to enter the program until the Society can find long-term partners also failed. Other Czech non-profits approached were also not interested to take over the coordinating role because of the high membership fees.

In coordination with DEFRA and the British Embassy in Prague, we redirected the project to a more local level. In Trebon existed a small group providing environmental education on a volunteer basis. This group acchieved good results but was in danger of being closed down due to financial and time problems.

The Society now host this project, providing a more professional surrounding which in 2005 will also include an interactive website on environmental education for and by children
    

10. Improvement of village green

Kojakovice offers little in the way of attractive public spaces or playgrounds for children. The old small tennis-play area has deteriorated over the years and has become unusable.

The Society received a grant from the Nadace Via program for improving public places in the village through democratic decision processes. During two public meetings the villagers posted several alternatives how to restore the playing ground. Based upon suggestions of the villagers and under supervision of the architect, two student architects worked out two options. At the final meeting the villagers voted for one of the options. During the summer of 2004 the project was realized mainly during two large weekend-actions with many volunteers from the village. The original field and ruble was cleared and regional road-construction company helped out with the groundwork, partly done free of charge. The playground was restored and made suitable for playing mini-football, tennis, and volleyball, including the goals, net, and ball. A 26 meter long and 3.5 meter large net was constructed along the roadside of the field to prevent balls to get onto the adjacent main road. Some wooden animals were constructed as playing opportunity for younger children. 

The playground now gives a much friendlier image and the children are regularly playing there. The Society is now looking for additional funds to complete all proposed improvements.
    

11. Local and regional collaborations

Local and regional collaborations continue steadily. Apart from collaborations for projects, the Society is also board member of the Village Association Microregion Ruze and its allied regional Civic Association MAS (Czech abbreviation for Local Initiative Group). These Associations of municipal authorities, entrepreneurs and non-profits aim to improve joint regional development proposals, projects and activities. Although the Society is not directly involved in most projects, our particiaption and activities help the Association to achieve its regional development goals.
    

12. Friends of the Rozmberk Society Inc, Iowa, USA: shared Czech – USA heritage and the need to find alternative funding sources.

Like most NGOs the Society is permanently searching for new funding sources. Unfortunately, EU and national funding obtained covers at most all actual project costs but often covers significantly less. For example, most EU funding requires between 10-55% matching funds, funds are paid late, and the final installment often is paid months after project completion. That means that matching funds have to be found and an NGO should be able to pre-finance part of the projects.

The 3-year grant from the American Rockefeller Brother Fund enabled the Society to start its operations and work flexible and respond quickly to changing circumstances, conditions paramount to achieving our current situation. The Society has also other good contacts in North America, in particular with persons from the extensive communities of Americans with Czech ancestry. This already resulted in the Sister City Partnership between Jilovice-Kojakovice and Oxford Junction, Iowa. Since 2002, two projects of the Society and part of its museum activities are focused on migration of Czechs to America. 

The Society has decided to intensify the contact with American persons and institutions and bring the cooperation on a more active level. Together with our American friends we established the Friends of the Rozmberk Society Inc, which was incorporated as a charity in the State of Iowa on 28 August 2003 and has its seat in Oxford Junction, Iowa.

The mission of the "Friends of the Rozmberk Society, Inc. " (FORS)is to:

• Support the Czech Rozmberk Society and help realize its missionActively help persevere the Czech heritage in North America Facilitate joint US - Czech projects and student exchanges
• Promote a free, democratic, and multi-cultural society.

In 2004, we managed to obtain tax-exempt status for the charity, which makes giving donations more attractive for donors. 

As part of these Czech-US activities, the Society particiapted in the bi-annual congress of ABANA (Artesian Blacksmith Association of North America) in Richmond, Kentucky. The ABANA board had invited blacksmith Daniel Cerny to demonstrate during this 3-day event. The Society used this opportunity to send a group of six people including three promising young blacksmith and two lecturors-interpreters to this event. The Czech participation was met with great interest and respect for the work demonstrated.

Afterwards, the group visted Oxford Junction and gave some more demonstrations of their work.

After 14 days, the blacksmiths and interpretors returned to the Czech Republic, while Robert Dulfer and Olga Cerna continued their trip and visited the Czech Heritage Festivals in Wilson, Kansas, and actviely particpated in the largest festival, that of Wilber, Nebraska.     

II Future activities

In the year 2005, the Society will continue with the two EU projects MIR and EMILE.
The MIR project will focus mainly on finishing the last projects, publishing and diseminating results, and preparing the follow-up application. The EMILE project will focus on contuining research into the migration history of this region and preparing the traveling exhibition and website about this topic and the project. 

An import project for the future of the Sopciety will be the PHARE 2003 craft project "With skillful artesians into the EU", which will start in Spring 2005. This project will be our main regional development activity and an important step forward in developing our Ecomuseum Ruze and its associated Craft Network. 

III. Financial Year 2004

The full financial report over the year 2004 is available upon request at our office. The audit report for the year 2004 has been completed and mentions our status as "without problems".

In 2004, the main income for the Society came from the EU Culture 2000 and EU Socrates projects. Additional funding was received from the Czech Ministries of Culture and of Education, Nadace Open Society Fund Prague, Nadace Via, regional Labor Office (employment support), Province of South Bohemia, and DEFRA (UK). 

Trebon, 30 June 2005.

Dr. Vilem Zachleder                                   Drs Robert Dulfer

President Rozmberk Society                     Director Rozmberk Society