AIn the Baltic Sea region the rural areas are facing the most serious challenges and threats. The dramatic changes in the past twenty years have affected all the countries, not only those which face the combination of restructuring after the end of the centrally planned economies and joining the European Union. The rural economies of countries such as Finland and Sweden are also suffering from unprecedented rapid change, due in large part to changes in agricultural policies in the European Union. ‘Let the villages live’ was a rallying cry in Finland some years ago when people first began to think that rural areas might be totally depopulated.

This crisis is the background to the project ‘Hope for the Villages’ which aims to propose ways forward for the churches and civil society to address the rural challenges. It is our proposition that for the future of Europe dynamic rural society has a vital part to play and agriculture should be developed in a way which sustains the earth and the rural life. We all need food to live a healthy life and food production cannot be organised in the same way as the production of mobile phones! Economy in the service of life has become an ecumenical catch phrase in recent years and the rural economy serves life in the most vital way!

Christians and the churches are present in almost every village in the region and the network ECG unites those in the churches concerned with the future of work and employment and with the communities where people live. The representatives of the ECG networks and groups in six countries around thefound out that they have a common interest in the future of the rural economy and the village. They found out that in every national case the deepest problems of poverty and lack of perspective could be found in the villages. Generally speaking, the villages furthest from the large towns and cities face the greatest crisis. This spiral ‘downwards’ means that the young people leave the villages and seek their future in the cities. This project wants to propose a hopeful future for the villages and puts people in the centre of building the future. 

Agriculture and rural life are shaped increasingly by the policies of the European Union and by intensified global competition. So we also have to look to the European dimension and the global dimension of the problems faced by agriculture and rural life. For the ‘villages to live’ implies changes in the way people live in urban areas and also changes in the policies which govern agriculture. It means that people in urban areas have to change their patterns of consumption and their expectations of rural areas of rural communities are to flourish.

Hope for the Villages aims to bring people working on the local level together in order to:

• Develop and share ideas for sustainability - socially, economically and culturally – developing a vision for the future of the village in Europe

• Find the spaces and ground for hope and for a good quality of life for all

• Share concrete projects and methods which support the realisation of the vision

• Find ways to resource ideas and the keys to effective action

• Focus on the role of people in developing their own initiatives and on the role of the church and local congregations in supporting rural life, the rural economy and community

• Develop new local – local and international networking in the Baltic Sea region and beyond

   

The six countries involved in the first stage of the project:- Estonia, Finland, Latvia<, Lithuania, Poland and Sweden are geographically quite near but the internal distances in some of the countries are enormous. The group decided to concentrate the Polish connection to the northwest area near to the coast since the ECG has good contacts there and travel is easy. The hope is that this process will widen to other countries.