To you who have been elected to the municipal and regional council in Jämtland Härjedalen:
A warm welcome to one of the finest and most important assignments one can receive. You will make decisions about schools, healthcare, entrepreneurship, and security. But you also have authority over something that easily falls between committees and budget items: people's own power to develop the place where they live.
Here, Leader plays a key role. Leader is a method where associations, businesses, and public actors meet around the same table to drive development based on the community's own needs and ideas.
Real difference
In Krokom, Leader contributes to the sports hall Allhallen. In Strömsund and Ragunda, the project Prepared helps associations strengthen local crisis preparedness. Other initiatives focus on entrepreneurship, leadership, culture, and meeting places. It is rarely the grand words that make a difference – it is when someone receives support to make an idea possible.
Through the municipalities' and the region's co-financing, local resources are leveraged with state and European funds, combined with private financing and voluntary work. The local effort thus becomes the starting point for a significantly larger investment.
A development office close to the people
But the value lies in more than money. Our Leader offices are development offices close to the residents. Here, there are employees who help test ideas, find partners, manage finances, and guide from thought to implementation. The project coaches know their communities, genuinely care about the people behind the ideas, and understand that the path to a completed project requires both conversations and revisions.
This is the core of the Leader model: local anchoring, personal commitment, and collaboration. The value continues in new networks and in the experience of being able to actually influence one's own home region.
Of course, we must report what the money yields in results. That is why knowledgeable guidance, follow-up, and long-term conditions are required.
Our call to you Our call to you as new and re-elected members is simple:
- See Leader as a partner.
- Safeguard the long-term co-financing – also for the work of the development offices.
- Use us as a resource, and feel free to come out and meet the people behind the projects.
It is in those meetings that you see what rural development actually means.
Anders Bromée, Chair Leader Grogrund
Per Bergvall, Chair Leader 3sam Strömsund–Ragunda