Rural development is centered on rural residents, their needs, views and activities. Leader activities create excellent opportunities to activate and produce new ideas specifically through the own and operational views of local residents. This activity is excellently supported by, for example, the Liiveri village project, which supports villages and their associations in development activities. The result has been excellent and very diverse new openings.
My work is related to the administrative procedures of agricultural subsidies and the business development of companies operating in rural areas. My area of operation is the city of Kurikka, which is one of the most significant areas of agricultural production and related processing in Finland, and the most significant city in Finland in terms of agricultural income. My positions of trust in the financial sector and in the protection of cooperative interests have well complemented the perspective I need in my duties as a member of the Liiveri board and the business division.
The operating environment creates a framework for the demand and need for work on agricultural development projects, business development, and a diverse rural economic structure.
The projects funded by Liiver have been and will continue to be a very important means of creating impactful new operating models and innovations based on the needs of entrepreneurs and residents. For a start-up company, the threshold for applying for Leader funding is low and the advisory service is first-class. Liiver's strategy has been implemented systematically and with extensive expertise, thanks to the staff for that.
The area of the current city of Kurikka is the operating area of two different development associations, Liiveri and Leader Suupohja, so that Liiveri operates in the area of the former Jalasjärvi municipality. It has been positive to note that cooperation between two different development associations is natural. One good example is the training and information dissemination project MaitoKurikka, where both Leader groups are the financiers and the target group is milk producers in the Kurikka area. In addition, Liiveri has implemented numerous development projects related to local food, business cooperation, youth activities and agriculture, where the implementers have been education and research actors, associations and municipalities in the area. In addition to this, there are of course investment subsidies for companies, which target product development, marketing, construction investments, quality work, etc. of various production and service companies in the countryside.
Overall, the work in the Liiveri Economic Development Division and the board is a diverse rural development, both from the business perspective of the business world and the community perspective of the residents, and the forward-looking management of these combinations. The public sector and its ability to create vitality together with Leader groups in the future are of great importance. In this work, finding new forms of partnership has played an emphasized role as part of the new provincial structure, with new actors coming on board and the new programming period bringing changes to the current model.
Reijo Hämäläinen
Rural Manager, City of Kurika