Enthused by success from last year we organized the Pillars of Sustainability Seminar this September. The participants came from various countries just like a year ago when attendees came for the adult learners’ workshop, which was subsidized by the Tempus Foundation, i.e. the Hungarian representative of European Commission. This seminar in September was officially advertized in the Grundtvig Training Database and therefore, those people came for the course who applied and won a Grundtvig grant in the category of Visits and exchanges in their home country.
Participants came from different small-communities from several countries like England, the Netherlands and Spain. Furthermore, some people joined the team part-time among others from Austria and the distant United Arab Emirates.
During field-work
In the course program field-works were the most popular sections of the course, where attendees could get practical experience based on information of theoretical presentations and in this way, they could inspect the achievements of Krishna Valley’s model community. Besides this the board game on community building, worked out and developed by the Eco Valley team, had unanimous success. During the eight-day course everybody could experience through the game what it is like to establish and maintain a small-scale community, and also what the challenges are in community development. Naturally, throughout the seminar challenging and provoking questions also emerged, so participants and the Eco Valley crew engaged themselves in matterful and ingenious conversations.
Travelling on a hay-cart pulled by oxen
Visiting the Cow Protection Centre
All in all, we may conclude that we had a successful and lucrative seminar on sustainability for attendees, who in all probability returned to their homes, communities with new ideas, knowledge and skills. We sincerely hope that they can use all knowledge acquired throughout the seminar and will be able to build and further develop their sustainability initiatives.
In accordance with our plans, we will pursue our courses in the future as well, the following seminar on sustainability will be in June next year.
