Seeds For Communities

Seeds for Communities | Зеленые города | 2021

An international program for the exchange of experiences and practices, on the topic of sustainable urban development. Based on the values of cooperation, care and responsibility.

“Seeds for Communities” is a program for anybody who participates in the development of local initiatives; that are related to urban greening, river protection, ecology in the context of the city. For those who are ready to build sustainable horizontal ties within their project and outside communities.

Our program provides an opportunity to share knowledge, to learn to act anatomically together, to distribute tasks among like-minded people – all in order, so our cities can become greener and sustainable.

We see the value of the program in expanding the direct participation of the local citizens, in creating a blue-green framework throughout Russia and the certain cities.

Participating Cities: St. Petersburg, Krasnodar, Saratov, Perm. In time, Nizhniy Novgorod, Yerevan, Ufa, Yekaterinburg, Kaliningrad and Kazan will join the list.

Partner City: Berlin.

From June until December 2021, activists from urban gardening communities participated in internships and educational trips to St. Petersburg, Krasnodar, Kazan and in the final event — [not]Conference GREENDATING.

As part of the Program we:

Explored sustainable solutions in urban greening, with invited experts/s and program participants in a horizontal format;

We explored and developed IT tools for task distribution, communication with volunteers, and collection of data on urban green infrastructure: examples like inventorization of trees, caring after greenery. As a result, a tree accounting platform has emerged;

Learned how to build public campaigns, visualise projects and hot to promote them;

Practised the development of horizontal teams and self-organisation;

Learned how to attract like-minded people / volunteers; and how to build long-term relationships with particular stakeholders and individual partners;

We discussed the role of the citizens in promoting the green agenda from below, climate change and certain trends in urban ecology.

What did we take away from the program?

Leaders of green communities are not alone, there are many of us. We have support from various cities across Russia. We can learn from each other; we can combine horizontal and vertical team management systems; we can use IT tools to increase the efficiency of our work. We can network and work together.