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Bridging the Urban-Rural
Divide in Poland
By Steve Owad
For someone running a bustling non-profit organization, moving from the
big city to the impoverished countryside might seem like a step
backwards. But it certainly wasn't so for Ewa Smuk Stratenwerth.
Smuk Stratenwerth at the Seed playground, which was built by volunteers in two days
The big move was made in 1993, when Stratenwerth shifted base from
Warsaw to a farm outside the hamlet of Grzybow, a hundred kilometers
west of the capital city. At the time, she was running Eko-Oko, an
ecological center founded by her in Warsaw in 1990 to promote organic
food and arrange Poland's first "organic fairs." She was also handling a
program on childbirth and breast-feeding, as well as promoting the home
production of healthful foods through a popular national TV program.
Trading her work in for 15 hectares of land and a handful of cows and
goats did not strike her as a sacrifice.
"I moved out here for two reasons," she says. "One was to be with Peter
(an organic farmer whom she would marry in 1994), and the other was to
do something practical to help the rural community."
Rural Poland, she knew, was (and remains) mired in poverty and
disillusionment. Fifteen million of Poland's 38 million people live on
farms, fewer than 20 percent of which turn in a profit.
Rural unemployment exceeds 20 percent and is growing, the drive to join the European Union is
removing the few remaining protective agricultural subsidies, and
non-farming job alternatives are scarce. An unfortunate offshoot of this
is rampant alcoholism among young men, mirroring their sense of
hopelessness.
"The people here are so poor that they see an
education for their children as something that costs money rather than
something that will help," Stratenwerth explained. "Even the best students drop out after grade
eight on nine. Out here, the boys are into drinking and the girls are
into finding husbands." Which, in turn, helps to create a
self-perpetuating cycle of poverty.
Stratenwerth's goal was huge: she wanted to settle for nothing less than
to help break that cycle, to provide farming families with the
"upliftment, motivation and practical skills" needed to elevate the
rural standard of living. Life on the farm can be both economically
viable and ecologically friendly she believed, and set off to turn this
into a reality.
In 1993 Stratenwerth started working on a concept for a self-sufficient
association to foster local development. After a year of meetings with
locals to work out a plan for the new organization, she registered the
Seed Ecological and Cultural Association.
The Two-Way Benefit Model
Under the Seed model, the Stratenwerths use their own farm as an
exciting entry point, a "living exhibit," giving visiting students from
city schools a hands-on introduction to organic farming and food
production. The young visitors are shown how cows are milked and animals
fed and there's always an activity where they make their own bread!
For Stratenwerth, it is important that the trips imbue the city students
with an understanding of and respect for farming and farmers. Just as
important is the money generated from these trips for funding the other
half of Seed's mission. The proceeds – 2,000 student visitors last year
paid up roughly $5 each – give Seed the money to run self-empowerment
programs for local farmers and their families.
Smuk Stratenwerth outside the "Ark," the Seed association's building
The Stratenwerths and their small team of volunteers use "the Ark," a
converted stable a few steps from their house, for everything from
computer and English lessons to publishing a local newspaper and
educating farmers and their families on organic-farming and craft-making
techniques. The couple are also building a nationwide network of organic
farmers and rural education centers and preparing a series of
scenario-based teaching manuals to help both urban and rural teachers in
public high schools run classes on organic food production and
sustainable development.
Providing More Than a Hands-On Exposure to How the Other Half
Lives
The idea of bringing the city to the country developed almost
accidentally. "When I visited this area back in 1990, I found country life so interesting that I thought others
would feel that way, too," Stratenwerth recalled.
Through her TV program, she announced that
she was launching "ecological Saturdays" in the Grzybow region. A rented
bus would take interested Varsovians to the countryside to meet local
farmers and learn about organic farming.
The response took her by surprise. "The same day I made the
announcement, I had enough people signed up to fill three
buses!" she laughed. Soon Eko-Oko was organizing weekly trips and even making a
little money. The trips were haphazard, though, with no real long-term
objective.
The idea of inviting children and youth came later. "We were starting
with nothing," Stratenwerth said. "All we had was our house and an idea
that kids could come out here to have direct contact with farming for a
day or two. We knew that most city kids don't know what it's like to
feed a goat or milk a cow. By coming out here, they can do these things.
Country life ceases to be an abstraction."
Local children in a play at the "Ark"
Schools had in fact been contacting Eko-Oko to arrange trips after
seeing the announcements on television, but Stratenwerth lacked a
sheltered meeting place. While establishing Seed as an association, she
applied to Britain's Kindersley Foundation for money to convert the
stable into a hall. The application, which detailed the Seed method of
funding rural self-development through awareness-building visits from
urban students, brought in £10,000.
Queries to the French Foundation for
Poland, the Regional Environmental Center for Eastern and Central
Europe, the Soros Foundation, and Warsaw's Children and Youth Fund
brought other money. Soon, the Stratenwerths were able to accommodate up
to 50 children at a time and outfit the bakery for visitors to prepare
their own bread.
Malgorzata Andruszewicz teaches a third-grade class in the
central-Polish city of Kutno. "Our school curriculum teaches students a
little about country life, but before visiting Grzybow, many
of our children had an idea that everything out there was green and
idyllic," Andruszewicz said.
The students' time in the country, which included lessons in
cheese production and wheat harvesting, taught them that life on the
farm is "hard, dirty work, but work that's important," she said. Such simple
messages are important in spreading Stratenwerth's "organic" message and
improving city dwellers' awareness of how rural people live.
Making a Lasting Impression
Upon returning to Kutno, Andruszewicz's class set up a photographic
exhibit of wheat and bread production for students in other schools.
Schools from Warsaw and Plock have made similar exhibits and organized
their own theater productions with ecological themes. For Stratenwerth,
the follow-up projects are essential as they help keep the Ark from
becoming "just a place for a day of fun on the farm."
Seed's post-visit contact with the schools usually involves telephone
calls to schedule future trips. Schools tend to design follow-up
projects without direct contact with Seed, sometimes with quick results.
After returning home from their Ark visit, students from Plock invited
Grzybow farmers, teachers and students to visit them with samples of
their organic breads, cheeses and vegetables. The exchange inspired
parents in Plock to open the city's first food stalls to sell organic
products.
For the rural students and their parents, learning about life in the
country is less important than making ends meet. Stratenwerth visited a
"folk high school" in Denmark in 1992. There she saw teachers training
students to use their local traditions as tools to earn a living,
selling, for example, ceramics and pottery as souvenirs to visitors.
Stratenwerth decided to import the school's modus operandi to Grzybow.
When not hosting city students, the Stratenwerths and volunteers run
organic farming workshops and seminars and teach traditional skills such
as candle making and weaving. The idea is not only to champion organic
farming (which, apart from being eco-friendly, earns farmers higher
prices for produce), but also to help locals tap into new sources of
income.
For the rural students, meanwhile, the English and computer lessons at
the Ark are low-cost options (less than a dollar per class) that don't
exist for most other rural youth. As the average urban school is five
times more likely than a rural school to have an English teacher and
three times more likely to have computers, the lessons are expected to
level the playing field for students who want to attend university or
hunt for work in the city.
Stratenwerth also stresses the association's integrative character. By
hosting art and photography exhibitions, dance lessons and concerts,
plays and pottery workshops, the Ark brings people together. "We're the
only place in the region that holds events specifically for disabled
people, and the local priest and local authorities – who aren't crazy
about each other – at least now both write for our newspaper!"
All of which is in the service of creating a sense of community that, in
turn, sets the foundation for locals to cooperate in sharing farming and
business tips.
Seed's structure ensures that the association is only semi-dependent on
outside funding. The school visits brought in roughly $12,000 last year,
or half of the annual budget. The other half came from Polish and
international NGOs, especially an EU program (Sustainable Development
for Mazovia and Rural Areas in the Pre-Accession Period) that has helped
Seed buy office equipment, organize study tours for adults and children
at folk high schools in Denmark, publish the newspaper and pay for the
computer courses.
Volunteers – at The Heart of Sustaining the Model
"Because we have our own income, if we lost some
funding sources we'd need to limit our work but would be able to
continue nevertheless," Stratenwerth said.
But only with help from volunteers. Stratenwerth and one paid worker run
the SEED office, keep the books and publish the newspaper, while the
Stratenwerths and a handful of volunteers do the farm chores and guide
visitors through their six- or seven-hour stays.
There is no need to
advertise. Most volunteers, themselves students or recent graduates,
approach the Stratenwerths after hearing about Seed through the media or
by word of mouth.
"We usually have two or three living with us," Stratenwerth said. "They
come for a half year or a year and use working here as a way of finding
some perspective before moving on."
The lone Seed employee is a former
volunteer who ended up managing the Seed office. Another ex-volunteer, a
disabled woman with no job prospects locally, gained office skills at
Seed that helped land her an administrative job at a Warsaw NGO.
Kitti Doelitzscher studied horticulture in Lipsk, Germany, and heard
about Seed from a friend of a friend while traveling. "It was late at
night when I knocked on the Stratenwerth's door, but Ewa
and Peter invited me in wholeheartedly," she recalled.
Stratenwerth leafing through a copy of The Vistual News
Doelitzscher oversees the
garden and goats and teaches English at the Ark. Two university students
run a crafts program for local children.
To cultivate volunteerism locally, Stratenwerth has started a local
volunteers' club. Locals teach everything from candle-making and folk
art to "creative listening" classes. Specialists are rarely needed, but
when they are, they usually come in the form of contacts forged during
Stratenwerth's days at Eko-Oko or local farmers with expertise in, for
instance, water contamination or soil degradation.
"The people working with us don't follow some strict program," Stratenwerth said. "I want them to work from their strengths and develop
something from their own passion." The flexibility is important. As the
visiting students range in age from four to 19, the program on any given
day must be tailored to suit the group.
"Small children need more play
time, but with high-school students, we try to evoke some discussion on
an important topic," Stratenwerth said. "Whatever we do, we try to have direct contact with
village life."
For a group from the Oko community association in Warsaw, that contact
involved exercises in separating grain from chaff, making cheese and
distinguishing between various types of herbs. Grazyna Gnatowska
organized the Oko visit.
"We had children aged three to 16 in our
group," she said. "The reason they all want to return is because they
weren't attending a lecture; they were participating in something
together."
Teamwork Makes the World Go Round
The ethos of hands-on teamwork is especially important when trying to
win locals over to organic farming. Although she says none of her
initiatives have failed, Stratenwerth says that results matter only when
everyone is involved in effecting the desired change. "If there's no
teamwork, there's no success," she said.
And success, she adds, means ensuring that this change stretches right
across the board. In Stratenwerth's ideal Poland, urban students spread
awareness of rural problems and organic agriculture, rural students have
the educational and job opportunities available to their city
counterparts, and farming communities escape the cycle of poverty by
building bridges to one another.
Achieving the latter, lofty aim involves awakening a spirit of activism.
"Many people who have spent their entire lives
picking strawberries and weeds and having trouble getting by are not
receptive to new ideas," Stratenwerth said. "If I have an idea for a program but see that
there's no feeling for it, I know I'll have to wait until that feeling
comes around."
So far, only ten local farms have converted to organic farming, selling
their produce in Warsaw and Plock. "You receive better prices for food
that's certified as organic, but organic farming is
hard work," Stratenwerth said. "A lot of people are still looking for easy solutions to their
problems."
That hasn't stopped her from mobilizing farming families nationwide to
follow in her footsteps. In 1998, she invited 20 farmers from throughout
Poland to a workshop titled "The Organic Farm as a Place of Education."
The plan was to find people in other communities interested in taking up
the Seed method of self-development.
"I invited people I knew who were interested in more than just farming,"
Stratenwerth said. The meetings, which are now scheduled three times a
year, train farmers how to host Seed-style student visits and run
similar local-development programs. The goal is for members to exchange
information and support one another when questions or problems arise.
And Now, Farmers As Academics!
The farmers themselves are writing the teaching manuals for Polish
schools. Titled "Food, Farming and Sustainable Development," the series
of booklets will not only be the first manuals on how to teach organic
food production and sustainable development; they will also include a
list of 35 farmers willing to train students at their farms.
Some farmers are already earning incomes by hosting school groups, while
some Seed-style organizations have taken root in other regions of
Poland. To spread the network even further, Stratenwerth plans to run
new seminars on developing more educational programs for farmers to run.
If there's a danger in all of this, it is that Seed would not stand on
its own without the Stratenwerths' ample input. Although volunteers run
many day-to-day programs, the couple still prepare and teach the more
specialized courses.
"Good Veggies Versus Poison Veggies": street theater organized by a Plock school after a visit to Seed
"I try to involve people," Stratenwerth said, "but
we're not yet at a point where Seed could operate without Peter and me."
The remedy: Delegate as much responsibility as possible and encourage
volunteers to improve their skills. "The best part of our teaching
manual was written by a woman who had no writing experience
and was convinced she could never put together such detailed scenarios
for lessons," she said.
The Future Can Only Get Better
In planning for the future, Stratenwerth expects the network of rural
associations to solidify within a decade (a time frame in which she
hopes Seed will also be able to function without her). A more immediate
goal is to improve the student visits.
"A six-hour visit is
too short for students to do very much. We need a place that can
accommodate them overnight," she said.
Such lodgings, says Gnatowska, would make it easier for city students to
forge relationships with rural students. "Some of our older youths
started friendships with some of the locals, but there
wasn't time to cooperate on anything substantial," she said.
While searching for funds to build a place for visitors to sleep,
Stratenwerth is scheduling more trips and organizing student excursions
abroad. Local youths have made trips to see sustainable-development
projects in Lithuania, Denmark and Belgium, and Stratenwerth has
organized trips for Polish farmers to organic farms and the folk high
school in Denmark.
Few of the farmers from the Danish trip subsequently switched to organic
farming, but success, Stratenwerth says, can only be measured in small
steps anyway. "While converting his farm, one local man
complained incessantly that he'd never be able to feed his four kids," she recalled.
"Now he boasts at our workshops that he's a 'successful organic farmer.'"
The conversion to organic farming is raising humus levels in local soil.
Every city school that puts on a play or organizes an exhibit spreads
awareness a little further.
Perhaps the main success is that others want to emulate the Seed model.
Working with visiting EU officials, Stratenwerth will try this year to
arrive at a concept for rural education centers that could operate
throughout central Europe. If the work bears fruit and governments sign
on to the project, Seed could have plenty of company sooner than
expected.
Needs:
Ewa Smuk Stratenwerth would like to hear from those who would be interested in
working on an organic farm in exchange for food, accommodation and a
small salary. She would also like to hear from people interested in
teaching English to local children for a small salary.
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