Those of us who are involved in the work with Leader in some way know that it is the local initiative that is the starting point. Local development projects are created and run by those who know their local area and know what development needs exist there.
Local development is initiated and carried out locally – that sounds obvious, right? It is, but it is not always that simple.
I started my career as a Leader administrator at the centrally located authority that manages the support – the Swedish Board of Agriculture in Jönköping. There I learned everything you need to learn as an administrator, including what rural development policy looks like at EU and national level, how many Leader areas Sweden consists of and where in the country they are located, which relevant IT systems form the basis for the work of administration and which routines and regulations an administrator needs to adhere to in order to be able to carry out their work of administering Leader projects. My time as an administrator at the Swedish Board of Agriculture has given me experiences and knowledge I didn't think I needed and I am still grateful for it today!
After a couple After years of processing at the Swedish Board of Agriculture, life decided that I would move home to Ängelholm and exchange processing at the Swedish Board of Agriculture in Jönköping for processing at one of Sweden's Leader offices. Processing is processing, you might think. I thought so too. But that move gave me perspective.
Processing on A central authority is not the same as handling at the local level where development actually takes place. At least that is my subjective opinion.
Suddenly, the days changed from reviewing PDF files on a computer to physically participating in decision-making meetings where a large number of competent people weighed every little piece of the puzzle for and against project ideas during long and thorough discussions.
What was it then? What was the big difference? Well, first of all, I realized that the processing of Leader projects takes place in several steps and that a processor has different roles depending on where they work. That's how it SHOULD be, but it hadn't occurred to me at the time that it actually WAS that way. Suddenly, the days changed from reviewing PDF files on a computer to physically participating in decision-making meetings where a large number of competent people weighed every little piece of the puzzle for and against project ideas during long and thorough discussions. Meeting after meeting for, among other things, discussions about rule and word interpretations with colleagues in different units was replaced by coaching phone calls or email contacts in order to best guide project managers or project participants in implementing their projects in the best and most correct way possible.
I still remember today when I had attended my very first LAG meeting where the board had decided to approve a project idea based on a predetermined scoring template. There were long and lively discussions about implementation capacity, whether and how the project contributed to local development, sustainability after the project's end date and lots of other assessment points in addition to that. I remember going home after the meeting and thinking: "Wow, imagine that this is how it works when a board prioritizes a project!" Think of all the times I had questioned the justifications for the board's assessments based on what I read in a PDF file in an office 250 kilometers away. That taught me a lesson that I will carry with me from then on and hopefully for a long time to come: How enormously important it is to be on site where it happens!
Thank you for your attention!
Joanna Persson, former administrator from there, now administrator from here