STUDY GROUP BUDGET MONITORING EMMERHOUT International visit Deepening Democracy / Oxfam Novib / Emotive. Saturday, October 3d, 2015. Community Enterprise Op Eigen Houtje. Speech by Dr. T. Postma (Theo), Advisor resident’s platform Wijkbelangen Emmerhout. Dear guests and fellow budget monitors, my name is Theo Postma I am a district resident, advisor of the local social entreprise and member of the local study group on budget monitoring. It’s my pleasure to say a few words to such a dis>nguished group of people about our project here in Emmen! I hope that you don’t blame me for reading aloud my text. Without it I would unfortunately spend too much of your precious >me. First some introductory remarks about the history, sketching the context of our case and then back to our cause1. To start, The NetherIands , as the word already indicates, can be considered a huge delta in northwestern Europe, it is rela>vely wet and surrounded by water, seas and many rivers cross the country as main highways, which triggered people to become fishermen and traders and gain an interna>onal orienta>on. Now I’ll go first to the ice>me, the Saalien or Riss-ice>me, of about 200,000 years BC, ice came from the north and Scandinavia to our region, it pushed rocks to our place and created ridges (like the Hondsrug, here nearby) at the edges of combined sand and North Sea clay, fruiSull soil, at the thus created plateau. When the earth warmed up again, former nomads from the eastern tundra’s arrived, seTled as farmers and hunters, they buried their main deaths under so-called dolmen, megaliths or as we call them hunebeds, made of huge rocks, comparable to Stonehenge. In this very neighbourhood we s>ll find fragments of these stone-age people (of 2-4 k.y. BC), stoneknifes, arrow heads, wooden wheels, imprints of poles for housing, cel>c fields, urns, poTery, etc. The subsequent warming of the land caused the coming into existence of forests, plants and swamps, which in the years to follow transformed into moors and peat, a material which can be used for hea>ng. So, tradi>onally we find in this region small farmers and peatcuTers, who all did rela>vely well, which during the centuries had some aTrac>ve power to people from other parts of The Netherlands or abroad. In this region, we therefore had a mix of people and their habits. AXer WW II, the Dutch and local governments decided to change the local economic infrastructure from a mainly agrarian/rural economy to a more industrialized one. Main mul>na>onal companies like (precursors of) Philips, Ericsson, Honneywell, and AKZO were aTracted to invest and establish here, even before they did so in other parts of the world. Also, this meant that labour had to be trained with the right skills; for the government this meant that former farmers and peat cuTers, along with their families, had to be transformed into skilled labour. Vital condi>ons for this were installing educa>onal ins>tu>ons, housing facili>es, and up-to date communal services, cultural organisa>ons and a corresponding governmental administra>on. In order to do so in the 50s to 70s
new housing districts like Emmerhout came into being. To have up-to date municipal services, high level corporate managers and directors, and educa>onal ins>tu>ons, knowledgeable people had to be aTracted, who acted usually top down, whilst workers and their families had to learn about hygiene and sanita>on systems, for instance to wash their hands aXer bathroom visits, use of sanitary napkins, and how to use a shower. I would like to equate Emmen more with RoTerdam for its hard working, no-nonsense mentality, than with Amsterdam, with its flair. Emmen’s economy, while being a regional hub, is s>ll rooted in industry and agrarian related ac>vi>es , like clusters of green houses and green synthe>cs, next to providing services such as tourism. Moreover, Emmen reached the next state of a more advanced knowledge and services economy, based on investments in educa>onal ins>tu>ons by the government, in R&D by private companies and in con>nuously improving their skills by the labourers themselves, for instance blue-tooth was developed here in Emmen, and various ac>vi>es in the green sector and sustainability induced to innova>ons such as bio-fuel and green synthe>cs. In due >me it became apparent that the municipality with their ini>al top down aetude and culture of highly skilled civil servants versus the local workers, could not adequately deal with both local and external circumstances; they, therefore, needed for their policy making more input, knowledge and commitment of the local communi>es and villages in order to arrive at innova>ve solu>ons for complex problems at the policy level. Local organisa>ons like district councils as here in Emmerhout came into life and started to par>cipate as recognized partners for the municipality and showed their strength in working boTom-up and in a certain respect, also middle-out. Therefore, this already proven successful district council was asked to par>cipate in the budget monitoring experiment of the Emmen municipality. We, as a local grass root organiza>on, take part, because it fits in our ambi>on and vision of having an open government and to govern our own district; another part of our vision is that we need to have empowered, commiTed, and knowledgeable residents to provide for high quality input and countervailing power vis- à-vis the government and its civil servants to obtain a real ‘civil society’ and realise op>mal happiness and wellbeing of our popula>on. Note that this district may be considered a district containing generally people that can be characterized as having on average a low social economic status (i.e. high unemployment, social isola>on: loneliness, less urban mobility)2, and also greying of the local popula>on is an issue here, as recognized by the district council, the laTer means the coming into existence of empty schools and specific problems for the elderly. Budget monitoring offers a way to deal with these problems and par>cular characteris>cs of this district from our point of view, which also asks for an adapted policy- making process and corresponding budget alloca>on mechanism, that allows to break through tradi>onal par>>ons, such as separate budgets for healthcare, for youth, for educa>on, for maintaining the rural green character and for roads and may s>mulate a more holis>c view of our residents; their problems can now be taken as a star>ng point for making strategic policy and opera>onal decisions. An example of an innova>on developed in this district is the so-called emmerhout-glue, this is a social innova>on in terms of a network organiza>on that ensures a more integrated approach of people with their individual problems, which necessitates former independent organiza>ons and ini>a>ves to collaborate. Another social innova>on for Emmen is our social enterprise in a former school, where we are right now. A main condi>on to be able to develop these ini>a>ves is that we are master of this district’s budget. In order to make this work, we need to have governmental transparency and have to make use of our
basic human rights, translated into a right to be informed on the present (sub) budgets and specific money streams, a right to challenge the current governance- and budget alloca>ng system, and maybe ul>mately also a right to bid or procurement of our own funds to enable our priori>es; another condi>on is the par>cipa>on and involvement of the local residents to help defining these priori>es; maybe you are willing to share your experiences on how to organize and guarantee this with us. For instance, we envision as a possible op>on here to develop a district –wide community enterprise, which allows for crea>ng and rewarding local labour training- and volunteering possibili>es, (re)par>cipa>on, strengthening entrepreneurship and related responsibili>es. Finally, we see this as a co-crea>ve process of trial and error and as Confucius taught us we may obtain zhi/wisdom by finding and following or maybe developing our own way or dao. We don’t need a Machiavelli for this and rely on own strengths and intrinsic mo>va>on. Thanks for your kind aTen>on.
1 This tekst is based on my own insights and reading of for instance the following literature:
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The newsleTer of the District councel of Emmerhout called Wijkberichten, a local house-to-house magazine. Kroniek; the journal of the Historic Society of South-Eastern Drenthe. Gerrit van Vegchel,1995, De metamorphose van Emmen: een sociaal-historische analyse van twin>g kostbare jaren 1945-1965 (The metamorphosis of Emmen, a social-historic study 1945-1965), Boom publ., Amsterdam. O.E. Harsema,1992, Geschiedenis in het Landschap: Hoe het Drentse landschap werd gebruikt van de toendra>jd tot in de 20e eeuw, Drents museum, Assen. M. Brandsma & M. Duijvendak, 2007, Canon van het noorden: het historische belang van Noord Nederland, Waanders Uitgevers Zwolle. Sis Hoek-Beugeling, 2007, Emmen, het groote vreugdeoord, Het culturele leven in Zuidoost Drenthe van 1850 tot 1945, Uitgeverij Noordboek, Kampen.
2 This may seem to be paradoxical: The Netherlands is on the one hand one of the wealthiest countries of the
world, on the other hand, people individually perceive and appraise their situa>on differently.