At the beginning of February, a small email landed at Upplandsbygd. Fredrik from Dalby Bygdegård knew that the well-known podcaster Patrick Sellman, who runs the podcast ”I ventan på katastofen” (Waiting for the Disaster), would be in Uppland at the end of February. Dalby Bygdegård has been interested in and involved in emergency preparedness issues for some time and saw the opportunity to arrange a lecture with Patrick to gain further knowledge and inspiration about emergency preparedness work. Unfortunately, they did not have the funding for this and that is why Fredrik contacted us at Upplandsbygd.
Then everything went very quickly! Since the theme of this lecture was preparedness/resilience, it fit perfectly into our strategy and we were able to collaborate with Dalby in a quick and flexible way because we run our own projects where there are openings for these kinds of gatherings and lectures.
So - we booked Patrick at Dalby Bygdegård on February 27th and how did it go? It was packed, the interest was huge. The 100 places available in the community center were booked up long before the lecture. WOW! What a feeling!
Was the lecture good, you might be wondering? Yes, it was great. Patrick Sellman has previously worked as a professional officer and was able to draw many parallels between preparedness around Sweden in the 1980s, during the Cold War, and now. He no longer works as a professional officer, but is now active both as a small farmer and beekeeper, but also as a preparedness expert and public educator. He made us understand the current situation at a national level and how important it is to have local resilience, where you work preventively on many different levels to not be so vulnerable when various large-scale systems fail in some way. What can you do locally then? Yes, you can start thinking about issues such as food, energy, water, transport and heating. And perhaps most importantly of all - the social - community, collaboration and cooperation locally.
Are you or your organization interested in doing something similar? Get in touch! We want to be the best partner for you here in Upplandsbygd when it comes to sustainable transition <3
See you! /Jenny