The skills and knowledge associated with traditional orchards and local heritage varieties of fruit trees, including their rich biodiversity and cultural heritage, are declining over Europe. However orchard social enterprises are increasing over many parts of Europe as an approach to educating and involving low skilled local people in the development and management of orchards, as well as the processing and marketing of tree fruit products. This project address this need and opportunity to improve orchard skills and knowledge. The CORE project aims to develop, based on the exchange of good practices, innovative pedagogical material that motivate and encourage rural, low-skilled adults to work together to set up, manage and use traditional orchards and their heritage fruit trees both as commercial and social enterprises. Our target audience is adult educators of rural, low-skilled, part-time farmers, smallholders, and members and volunteers of land-managing community organisations and social enterprises. The five partner organisations are either social enterprises or foundations, promote traditional orchards and local heritage fruit trees, provide education courses. They are coordinated by SustEd – Sustainability Education, UK, and include Fundacja AgriNatura, Poland; The Ecological Institute for Sustainable Development, Hungary; Streuobstwiesen Netzwerk Nordeifel eG, Germany; and Archeologia Arborea Foundation, Italy. The project focuses on exchanging good practices in terms of educating adults using at least two one-day courses run by each of the partners, with over 200 participants. The courses help us to test and develop some teaching guides. Our links with wider networks and our associate organisations enables us to showcase a range of commercial and social enterprises. The partners have regular monthly Skype calls and partner meeting in each of the four partner countries, producing newsletters to review progress, and regularly updating our social media. All the teaching resources are freely available through the website. The project developed a website with a database of contacts and good practices, as well as case studies on a range of enterprises and courses, and short videos. It also produced some teaching guides on Growing heritage varieties of fruit trees; Marketing heritage orchard products; Managing orchards with nature; and Working with others as an orchard enterprise. Lastly it established a Network of European Traditional Orchard Educators. The project has a wide range of impacts on the partner staff and organisations – improving their educational services, more educated and motivated staff, more recruitment of members and volunteers, and introducing three of the partners to Erasmus +. It improves the skills, employability and satisfaction of learners, and enable them to extend their interests and experience and skills in the management of orchards, as well as the use, processing and marketing of a wide range of heritage tree fruit. Lastly it enables orchard educators to link with others through a new European network.
We wanted to develop, based on the exchange of good practices, innovative pedagogical material that will motivate and encourage rural, low-skilled adults to work together to set up, manage and use traditional orchards and their heritage fruit trees as commercial and social enterprises, as well as community projects.
We applied because of lack of skills, especially by younger adults, and because many volunteers and members of the partner and other organisations wanted to set up community orchards and recruit and teach other volunteers. Also there is a strong interest in several partner countries eg. Poland and Hungary, to set up social enterprises. The skills and knowledge associated with traditional orchards and local heritage varieties of fruit trees, including their rich biodiversity and cultural heritage, are declining over Europe. However orchard social enterprises are increasing over many parts of Europe as an approach to educating and involving low skilled local people in the development and management of orchards, as well as the processing and marketing of tree fruit products. This project addressed the need to improve orchard skills and knowledge.