Working with partners in Hungary as part of the CoSIE project – a 3-year programme of work that looks at the co-creation of public services across Europe – the People’s Voice Media team have been using Community Reporting techniques to support people living in rural areas of the country to share their stories.

In the CoSIE project, 9 pilots are taking place to test out different co-creation methods in different public services and the Hungarian pilot aims to revive forgotten culture of household economy, horticulture and livestock farming on disadvantaged rural areas. The pilot seeks to strengthen the local families (and community) to develop their role in the local economy and enhance the local families’ awareness, self-respect and self-subsistence. As part of the pilot, families will be supported to design and implement their own household economy plans with equipment, mentoring and coordination. The pilot will also prepare the local actors (mayors, coordinators) for mobilizing the household economies.

Earlier this year, two of our trainers from Budapest went to Solznok to work with families and coordinators involved in the pilot to train them as Community Reporters and capture their stories of the pilot so far. Whilst people were initially a little sceptical about this method and thought they were going to be attending a “boring lecture”, their feedback at the end couldn’t have been more different! They connected to the ethos of Community Reporting and valued the time and space it gave them to share their ideas and experiences with one another. The group have set-up a closed Facebook group to share their stories for peer review with one another, and they’ve posted some initial stories on the Community Reporter website – you can have a look at some of them here!

The best news is that the group have asked for more! So the team will be back in Solznok in September doing some skills recapping and also teaching some new technical capacities such as video editing. We’ll give you an update on how the work progresses later in the year.