We work in many important areas. Each year, however, we concentrate on certain issues. See below for a presentation of a few of these areas.
Gender equality is one of the areas we devote a lot of time to. The work towards a gender equal rural movement started in 2008. In the first phase, our 24 county councils have received help and support to develop action plans to implement the gender equality strategy that was established by the board. The work will be completed during 2009.
We also manage a project that map out women business owners. One of the aims with the project is to be able to provide better guidance for women entrepreneurs.
Sustainable Villages is an important project in which 25 villages create sustainable solutions that aim to lessen their dependency on oil. This project will be completed during this year. We will, however, continue the work towards a sustainable environment by organising a Swedish transitional network - Transition Sweden - that forms part of the international Transition Network.
Sustainable energy is an important part of our future, which is why we give much effort to supporting the rural population in setting up local wind power plants.
Local planning is another prioritised issue. Local planning implies that people in a village jointly decides what needs to be done in the district and how to go about realising it. The goal is to bring as many local action groups as possible to develop new plans or update their old ones, preferably in coordination with the overall plan of the municipality.
Good ideas very often need capital to come to life. Therefore we also work hard with informing the groups of how to raise local capital in various ways.
In the last few years the number of petrol stations has decreased in the Swedish countryside, and in the next few years even more of them will disappear. In cooperation with several other organisations, Hela Sverige ska leva has developed a model for how small petrol stations can join in a network and so continue operating when the large companies no longer want to deliver fuel. The work with spreading the model is on the way.
