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HEPF is a member of the Environmental Partnership

Our mission

The Hungarian Environmental Partnership Foundation aims at enhancing the development of an environmentally aware, participatory democratic society and institutional system by strengthening and supporting the civil environmental movements.

The foundation promotes the development of the environmental movement trough providing grants, training, fellowships and technical assistance where necessary.

Horány – Summer school of young environmentalists

Horány – Camp for young leaders of green organizations – Personal mpressions

I had heard a lot about Environmental Partnership’s ‘summer school of young environmentalists’ organised in Horány in 2004, so in 2005 I applied with great expectations. Those who had taken part in the previous year had enthused about the level of debate, about the creativity and the challenging ideas they had been happily confronted with, were inspired by the maturity and the width of critique the participants had shown, and had come back from the summer camp full of energy and inspiration.

Hence, while I was still enthusiastic, I was a bit disappointed when I found out that some of the ‘movement people’ whom I have the most respect for had all dropped out at the last minute. Reasons for this, I was told, ranged from people having too much on, to others also hearing that their peers had dropped out, and had gathered from this that the ‘meeting of minds’ was going to be rather less challenging. It’s true the summer is a full time for many, but this was really rather a pity and I got the impression the group bordered a little on elitism. While this was rather discouraging, I still hoped to get the opportunity to have some ‘shared thinking’ with people from outside Budapest, whom I have heard of but had little contact with.

The experience I had was mixed. On the positive side, the three days I spent in the ‘summerschool’ helped me identify some new areas that over the next few years we will slowly work towards. Ideas of a ‘common portfolio’ to press the banks towards accepting some ethical stances came up, as did the idea of fundraising for bigger costs such as a shared office or NGO house based on supporters ‘investment bricks’.

Also we threw ideas around about a bigger summer school, which would give more time to forge a common identity and movement strategy. We have the National Gathering of Greens each year, but it doesn’t seem to get down to any really difficult questions, rather has accepted a ‘loyal opposition’ role in respect of government and society… however that’s a bigger question if we can ever get round to it!

Importantly, it was useful to make new contacts, ones which over the past year have allowed me to approach the activists and their organisations with more confidence than I would have had I not spent time with them in the camp: to cite one example, it was easier to ask different groups to become ‘Global Project Video-banks’, part of my work this year, as I had met them, had a beer with them, and knew a little better how to approach them. Also, it was good to get on smiling terms with people from the NGO Csalan (‘Nettle’), who were a great help at the Greens NG (or ‘The Green’s Big Blether’ as we call it in Scotland). Thanks for that!

On the other hand I have to be honest and say the discussions did not provoke me as much as I would have liked: I was pretty disturbed and frustrated at how low the green movement was setting its sights: no clearly communicated ‘Big Concepts’, little systematic thinking dealing with the roots of the problems our societies and with it our environment face, no real vision, and no real strategies. The movement seems to be in a rut. A lot of hard-working and well-intentioned, committed people (and I really mean this, not just trying to white-wash my criticisms!), but no real concept of the world we live in, the actualities of the global commons and the local aspect of this we work in.

I felt that we were too abstract, working in a ‘I’m funded therefore I am’ project-mentality and had not enough vision to produce real content in our discussions. This is a pretty serious accusation, and I lay it at my own door too: we constantly need to ask ourselves just what we are doing and where we are going. Lengthy strategy sessions and organisational development processes are not, I think, the answer: a wider civil dialogue, more vision and more engagement in actual communities, and dare I say it, actual-civil-politics may help us get there. This is what I miss in my own work, and Horány brought me closer to defining this weakness, but not to engaging with it.

What would I have liked from Horány? To have been challenged by great green ideas: to have been encouraged to think more deeply about my own basic presumptions: to have had the chance to brainstorm new strategies, and look frankly and critically at what the green movement is doing here in Hungary, with an eye on the global movements we are part of. Horány is a bit of an institution: we have expectations of it, but like the old cliché ‘we get the government we deserve’: the same is true of Horány. We need it, so we have to make it work for us. Here’s hoping that we can get more out of ourselves next time!

Treacey Wheatley, Protect the Future (Védegylet)