Finnish Village Action Movement, Finland

We are not willing to regard economic values as more important than the quality of life. We don't believe in development through centralised structures for decision-making and services. Instead we believe that people should control their own lives... We are particularly happy if our movement can be an encouraging example for rural people in both the industrialised and developing countries to demonstrate that vibrant life is not inconsistent with development.

Like many industrialised northern countries, during the 1960s and early 1970s Finland experienced rural depopulation. In the mid 1970s, however, there were the first signs of a movement for rural revival. The new ideas of the project (e.g. concrete utopias) caught the public imagination. In 1976 it came to the attention of Lauri Hautamäki, now Professor at the University of Tampere in the Department of Regional Studies. He started a project of Action Research into this embryonic movement, to evaluate the potential for revitalisation of rural communities.

In the 4,000 villages of Finland about 3,000 Village Committees have been formed during the last 20 years. They involve about 25,000 people directly and positively affecting the lives of some 500,000 people in the areas of culture, leisure, communications, services, housing and economic development. The Village Committees are an expression of small-scale collective action over individualism. Communal facilities are emphasised or restored as are public and social services, including health, postal and transport services.

As each Village Committee grows in confidence and organising experience, they make new demands or take new initiatives. The local governments are giving the Village Committees increasing support. There is evidence that the Committees are having a revitalising effect and creating new cooperation between the villages' more traditional organisations. Household and farm extension services are also reviving, especially, in the latter case, in the field of organic agriculture.

Currently one of the most important features of the movement is its increasing strength at the provincial and national levels. This started in 1990 with 280 Village Committees of Lapland establishing their provincial Council of Village Committees. Four other provinces have done the same, a further expression of the growing determination among rural people to preserve the dynamism, quality and variety of their lives against the continuing trends elsewhere of urbanisation, centralisation and loss of rural local control and self-reliance.

The Finnish Village Action Movement was recognised by the Right Livelihood Awards in 1992.