The regional development team at the Kellerwald Association is fully staffed again. Annegret Franz and Josephine Lindemann, two experienced professionals, are taking over the regional management of the Kellerwald-Edersee region as an equal duo. Contact persons for LEADER funding (Contact) they are now available to municipalities, associations, companies and private individuals.

Annegret Franz, who joined the team in April, learned to appreciate the surrounding area and its many positive examples during her studies in Sustainable Regional Development at the University of Kassel. "The commitment and creativity of the people in the villages and small towns to expand or redesign their living and working environments to make them even more livable is motivating. Supporting this effort with funding is an exciting opportunity." The connection between nature parks and regional development has long been a key focus for her.  

Josephine Lindemann joined the team in August 2024 and is familiar with the region from her previous work at the Kellerwald-Edersee Nature Park, where she helped secure the "Quality Region Hiking in Germany Edersee" designation. During her studies in sustainable regional development and nature conservation in Berlin and Eberswalde, she focused on rural areas and learned to value them as cornerstones of our society: "It is important to strengthen these areas in their diversity, utilize their potential, and understand them as spaces for innovation."

Steffi Schäfer, a long-time employee of the office, supports them both, thus maintaining continuity in the office organization. She contributes valuable input from previous LEADER funding phases and supports the two new specialists with a wealth of knowledge and experience.

The regional management provides advice on LEADER funding applications – for example, for projects in nature-based tourism, business expansion in the skilled trades, or technical equipment for community facilities. They maintain close contact with the responsible approval authorities. The goal remains to make life in the region attractive and worth living through successful projects, thus gathering compelling arguments for funding after the current funding period ends in 2027.

Caption:

The new team of the Kellerwaldverein: (from left) Josephine Lindemann, Steffi Schäfer, Annegret Franz

Over 60 interested people came to our panel discussion in the Bad Wildungen youth center. The discussion with Mona Schwarz and Angela Odenhardt focused on the concept of community. We exchanged ideas about what we and others understand by this. We discussed why the idea of ​​'community' can also be linked to right-wing extremist ideas. And we talked about how a community with the most democratic elements can be created, what emancipatory potential it also has, and what that means for a rural region worth living in.

The event took place in various formats and in cooperation with several actors. Together with the LEADER regions Hersfeld-Rotenburg, Knüll, Mittleres Fuldatal, Rhön and Schwalm-Aue and with the support of the State Advisory Centre for Community Living in Hesse, we are organising a series of events on community living in rural areas. In addition, participants from the action days of the youth centre and the participants of a 'Workshop week for emancipatory ruralities' of the Kompost Ensemble eV.

LEADER has long been concerned with questions of social-ecological transformation: How do we create climate-proof and sustainable rural areas? How do we strengthen regional, cooperative economies and good social cohesion in our regions? We attended this year's LEADER meeting and helped to organize one of four workshops on the topic of 'Commons - a rural practice of shared resource use'. Commons can generally be understood as the communal use and management of goods and resources. In rural areas, pasture forests and orchards as well as collectively used bakeries and cold stores still convey this idea today. More about the event and the documentation of the workshops are here visible.

The Kellerwald Association has been around for 30 years now. It wasn't easy at the beginning. With some effort, a group of committed people managed to bring the European LEADER program to the region in 1994. This paved the way for a success story in the development of the region that continues to this day. The numbers speak for themselves: By April 2023, 445 projects with a total amount of 14,6 million euros had been launched in the region. The program not only created over 350 new jobs, but also strengthened the cohesion of the region, the involvement of political, voluntary and economic actors in the content orientation of the region and increased the quality of life here in the countryside.

Since Corona, more people in Hesse have been moving out of the cities and into rural regions. The Berlin Institute even speaks of a "new desire for the countryside" in the Germany-wide trend. But in rural regions, the dream of owning your own home meets the reality of limited building sites and rising costs. And rental apartments are also scarce in many places. Young people who move back to the countryside rarely return to their parents' house. And parents rarely rent out their children's empty rooms. In rural areas, the living space per inhabitant is slowly and steadily increasing: in 2018, according to the Hessen Atlas, around 56% of people in rural areas lived between 50 and 60 square meters. But newcomers are finding it increasingly difficult to find suitable housing. Can communal and intergenerational forms of living provide a way out of this one-way street? Interest in these living formats is growing among (young) families, older people, singles and couples alike. What potential does this offer for social and ecological regional development? With the series of events from April to November, some LEADER regions in North and East Hesse invite anyone interested to join them on a joint research trip. Using practical examples, the series of events offers the opportunity to discuss the challenges of self-chosen neighborly coexistence and questions of suitable organizational and financing forms with local housing initiatives.

Please register online for upcoming events: https://forms.office.com/e/WMxSSGkYRx

A format of the LEADER regions Hersfeld-Rotenburg, Kellerwald-Edersee, Knüll, Mittleres Fuldatal, Rhön and Schwalm-Aue with the support of the State Advisory Center for Community Living in Hesse.