„Lauku Ceļotājs” receives award in Brussels for EU project
13.06.2013
On 5th June in Brussels, the president of the Latvian Countryside Association "Lauku Celotājs", Asnāte Ziemele received an award Best Life-Environment Project for POLPROP-NATURA project in EU LIFE programme. The project took place in the SlītereNational Park as a demo territory from 2009-2012. "Lauku Ceļotājs" executed the project together with the people and organizations of Slītere. The sustainable tourism development model was created by attracting local entrepreneurs, inhabitants, local authorities and administration of SlītereNational Park. This experience was used for making proposals for environmental protection and tourism development policy.
One of the main acknowledgements was that nature and environmental protection issues have to be discussed in plain and understandable language for everyone and extra attention has to be paid to local people' s interests.
"Lauku ceļotājs" is proud about the achieved results and happy that local people have found the project useful in further development. Many introduced initiatives are now continued by locals themselves. For example, annual Slītere Travellers Day, tourism trail marking, coastal architecture guideline are used at territory planning, created tourism products and information materials are still used in marketing. All interested parties within the SlītereNational Park are now working in close cooperation for common goal and that is one of the main achievements..
Receiving this significant award we are grateful to all those Slītere people who trusted us, cooperated, were involved and showed initiatives during all the project period. We believe that constructed and friendly cooperation we experienced there was a key to the success of this project.
More information on the award ceremony here.
This is a second LIFE award for "Lauku ceļotājs". The first award was received in 2004 for creating and implementing the Green Certificate (environment quality sign in rural tourism accommodation places). Green Certificate is still working with the support from Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development of Latvia and Latvian Environmental Protection Fund. 75 accommodation places owe the certificate at the moment.