As a result of the project Sharing Experience: Co-production and Use of a Czech-Norwegian Resource for competence based education to support rural communities, financed from the Czech-Norwegian Research Programme (CZ09) published Charles University Environment Centre publication Sustainable rural entrepreneurship – inspiration.
Unlike science, educational goals can relate not only to reality but also to the ideal. Education is thus in the centre of attention of social reformers who enforce long-term vision of a "sustainable" society that does not associate its development just with immediate success. Such a society should be based on an economy that reveals the original meaning of this word – care for home (oikos) – creating thus basic values, and caring for them over the long term. These core values cannot arise without an "authentic" relationship with the original resources, techniques, processes and their results. In order to preserve these direct relationships, re-established through the work, the education system must also be invoked. The presented publication is a small contribution to the debate on this subject – it shows the work as a culture-forming element, while this role is recently jeopardized. However, thorough, creative work is important for individuals and for society: needed to reflect intrinsic motivation, one’s place in the wider community and in the surrounding environment; helping to build relationships with other people and to uncover sense of everyday existence. In order to be able to perform such a meaningful and useful job, many competencies are needed, which are described in this publication by the small entrepreneurs. The authors recorded their words in categories that emerged from the subsequent qualitative analysis of these interviews – this experience is thus presented to be used in "practice" of teaching.
Full text of the book is available here (sorry only in Czech).
