Sustainable Sweden Tour
31st August – 8th September 2013
The Sustainable Sweden Tour took place the 31th August to the 8th September this year !
We welcomed a group of 8 participants : 7 of them were American from the Brainbridge Graduate Institute in Seattle and the last one was swedish ! The Itinerary was great, but we can say that we slept in very original accomodations. The trip was : a former jail (Langholmen hotel in Stockholm) – a school (in Södertälje) – a former jail (Hotel in Visby, Gotland).
We started the Tour in Stockholm where we stayed 2 days. We had the chance to have a sunny weather during all the week. Then we had the opportunity to have a walk through the city on Sunday to know us a little bit more from each others. Tobjörn explained us that the week will be intense. He also introduced the group to the « Ecomunicipality 5.0 » concept and precised his vision of a new sustainable economic paradigm since he has decades of experiences.
We really started on Monday, where we had our first visits in Stockholm. Susanna Elfors, from the company Esam, has shown us the Nature Reserve of Stockholm and the Eco-village Understenshöjden. Then we had the chance to discover the Royal Seaport Project in Stockholm, presented by Tomas Gustavsson. On the evening, we discovered our next destination : Södertälje, in the south of Stockholm. On the evening, we ate with politicians and other key persons of the municipality. We have spend 3 days in this area.
We had great moments : we visited a recycling station, several organic food gardens, a cultural house in Jarna, an Eco-bank, and an other Eco-village (Charlottendall). We learned a lot of things in different ways, and held many debates. Participants were really involved during the visits, always asking questions and trying to debate with our lecturers. These 3 days in the Södertälje area were very intense, but also very friendly : we have celebrated a participants’s birthday and we had several meals where we laughed and discussed together.
Then we took the ferry to go to the island of Gotland, where we had a seminar (« Together towards a new sustainable economic paradigm »). During the afternoon of the 6th September, several lecturers presented us their association, movements, actions and ideas about building a new sustainable paradigm for our societies. We also had the chance to have a presentation from the chilean economist Manfred Max Neef. We ended the seminar with workshops on the 7th September in the morning. We had some final visits in Gotland’s countryside where we could participated to a big farmer festival.
The Tour ended on the 8th September : we came back to Stockholm where the group has separeted. At the central train station, the farewells were not tearing because we knew that if the Tour was over, the experience was for everyone a way to start something new.
Now, you can find all the detailed articles day per day, videos and pictures of the Tour on our new blog : http://sustainableswedentour.wordpress.com/
