Ekozahrada Raková

IDENTIFICATION OF THE CASE STUDY

Case study number: CZ-04

Name of the farm/organization:

Ekozahrada Raková / Raková Eco-garden

Title of the case study:  

Overcome fear

MAIN DATA 

Country

Czech Republic                 

Year of establishment

2018

Target groups

• Disabled people

Type of farm

• Non-profit organization
• Vegetables, herbs, shrubs (garden form)

Size (in hectares)

Approxi. 2 ha

Numbers of employees from target groups

30

Number of members from target groups using services without employment

600 people / year visits to the farm - this figure applies to total visitors. If it were to apply only to people with disabilities it would be 0, they don't have any other form of support for people with disabilities outside of employment yet.

Sources they live from

Disability allowance (75%), income from Community-supported agriculture (CSA) and vegetable sales, provision of services (mainly gardening)

Innovative / not innovative

Yes, in the form of the combination of social and community farming (CSA)

Websites:

www.ekozahradarakova.cz

www.2343ec78a04c6ea9d80806345d31fd78-gdprlock/ZahradaRakova

www.8dc6460bbbb088757ed67ed8fb316b1b-gdprlock/ekozahradarakova 

DESCRIPTION

Eco-garden Raková is a joint project of three non-profit organizations committed to the principles of social entrepreneurship and with extensive experience in employing disadvantaged people. Since 2018, they have been creating their Eco-garden on a farmstead, which they saved from dilapidation, by transforming the adjacent land and rented fields into a rugged mosaic of beds, foil beds, areas with fruit trees, shrubs, and a pond.

By growing a variety of vegetables, they offer people with disabilities the opportunity to enter the labour market. They see the diversity of the plants they grow as important and this allows them to offer a wider range of activities for employees with different disabilities. With more vegetables, albeit in smaller volumes, and therefore more economically expensive to grow, it is harder to resist cheaper conventional competition in the conventional market. However, this is not the case in the case of the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) where, on the contrary, a significant variety of vegetables is highly valued.

They are one of the key players in the social farming sector and the ones who have great potential to spread knowledge and understanding further, as well as to create a place in the locality that goes far beyond the locality in its influence.

Behind the success of the garden are, among other things, highly motivated people with strong personal stories, able to lead and manage as well as absorb new experiences. We interviewed Alena Lehmanová, who is part of the management team and who is the head gardener and also the coordinator of the whole garden. The main emotion of the interview was the unflinching courage and ability to go far beyond one's limits if one perceives that one's work has meaning and brings good to both people and the landscape.

POSITIVE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE

What was the motivation of the founders of the farm? Alena was not part of the team at the very beginning of the organization, but as far as she knows, the main motivation for starting the garden was to find more job opportunities for people with disabilities. Raková Eco-garden is part of a larger group of organisations and one of the parent organisations has been creating projects where disadvantaged people can work for almost twenty years. Part of their plans included a restaurant and a school snack production facility, so the idea of growing their own vegetables for these projects was born, which is the origin of the creation of the Eco-garden.

Over time, it became apparent that during the peak harvest time (summer months), neither the restaurant nor the snack shop had any sales. Therefore, the switch to CSA was made. Eco-garden has established the first CSA group in the west of the Czech Republic and they are pioneers in combining organic, social and community supported agriculture. They received ecological certification three years after their establishment. In addition to directly employing people with disabilities, they currently also offer advice in the field. Stably, 30 employees with disabilities find employment and community in the garden and the group of shareholders involved in the CSA includes about 230 members.

OBSTACLES AND HOW TO OVERCOME

Alena personally had a great respect for the people for whom she was creating the garden. Today, she sees it as important that disadvantaged employees are seen as partners who have the same value. Seeing not their handicap first, but what they have in themselves. Balancing respect and pressure to perform was and is also challenging: „It's hard to judge when someone needs support and when they need to stop. Maybe it's easier to wrestle with vegetables than to do a good job with people. "

The biggest problems with employees were not related to the fact that a person has a disability, but the value setting of each individual. Even among these people, there are fine people and there are people who do not behave fairly. Alena praises the current team, "Sure there are friction points, but people are able to support and help each other. The most difficult thing from an organizational point of view is whether they come to work at all. We try very hard to accommodate them and it's challenging and unpredictable organisationally. "

What is still a challenge? The search for stability. The challenge is variability and there are many variables in agriculture. It seems to me that we are still a small project. Even our experience with land and its care is short and our physical facilities are very much a work in progress. When this whole thing was created, we wanted to create a transferable model. I'm not entirely sure that's possible today, given the diversity of natural conditions.

RECOMMENDATIONS, ADVICE

Raková has a specific evaluation of its people: 'We try to evaluate our employees financially from two perspectives. One is expertise and the other is commitment and motivation. This system has worked best for us."

Another piece of advice that Alena has is to have sufficient knowledge in agriculture, ideally right from the start. In Eco-garden they did not have such knowledge at the beginning, but they had another advantage - they had an organization behind them that had a lot of experience in working with people and employing people with disabilities. Therefore, farming itself was more of a challenge than working with people. The original agricultural facilities they had rented had ceased to function. So the founders looked for a new location until they bought a derelict, rather large farm. As a result, they took up farming on a larger scale than they had originally expected.

Alena comments: "For a normal beginning farmer, starting with ten to fifteen people with disabilities is not realistically sustainable. So the advice is to start with small bites, try to have a firm footing, and be more careful. Start in a way that still leaves time to learn as you go along."

What also needs to be broken in the current system are administrative and legislative constraints. The current legislation is set up in such a way that it is necessary to devise complicated ways of accessing financial support. It also depends a lot on the people who are currently sitting in the office.

PROMO

Vegetable sales are handled through community-supported agriculture (CSA) and small yard sales. In the beginning, they launched a larger campaign to CSA to get the first shareholders and now they are already getting customers directly through their friends. Locality is also important to Rakova: "To be visible in the local space, we're trying to pick a few events this year that are on gardening or agriculture-related topics and show up there. We're also trying to make ourselves known to those who might be interested. For example, we've been to town fairs. As a sales event, it didn't make sense, but as a promotional event, it had an effect. So in addition to online presence, it's good to be physically visible at events where we can get the word out." However, they would like to take further visibility in the online world as well. 

FINAL SENTENCES

Raková plan is to improve the land so that it is more of a garden than a field. In the longer term, they would like to incorporate a "green care" aspect, garden therapy. They employ people who will never perform substantially. But they see that being in the garden is beneficial for them. Therefore, they would like to incorporate even more therapy into their current activities and offer this opportunity further afield than their employees. Giving more space once a week to people for whom it is more therapy than work.  To make the garden a place that will inspire, build a space so lovely that it will motivate. A place that brings the village to life. A place that will be more like home.

Alena's positive assessment at the end: 'I am proud of the fact that we can support each other so much that we keep going. I'm proud that we didn't give up in unpleasant moments. Things are not ideal, but together we managed to develop further. Everyone has a piece of it, everyone puts something important."