Átalakuló Wekerle - Overgang Wekerle

Below, you can find an account of Transition Wekerle 1:0, but where is this community initiative today?

UPDATE 2025: Started in 2008 in the suburbs of Budapest, in the 100 year old Garden City Movement estate called Wekerle, this was an intentional pioneer project to inject confidence into the at then unusual concept of a local community organising itself in light of the growing climate crisis. Today, after suffering what has been described as the ‘Doughnut Effect’; loss of key members through migration and to paid jobs in big NGOs; silly interpersonal conflicts; vastly fluctuating capacity; becoming councillors and council committee members; working with, against, and in spite of the local council; working with a miriad of local and international entities on climate education; initiating a ( so far ) amazingly successful campaign opposing major woodland destruction for road building; loosing another amazingly conflictual campaign on local school catering and (alledged) corruption; organising culturally innovative participatory processes on farmer’s market development, green space, national and local elections, and the woodland’s future….And of course providing the “inspirational example and initiating capacity” for the Catalyst Communities Network, a  5 year long, funded cooperation between 25 local Roma, ecovillage and urban subcultural projects which almost resulted in a functional Transition HUB but didn’t quite make it…

And now? This has all culminated in this group of random concerned and variously committed individuals setting up a local cooperative and wrapping up all our energies into opening a packaging free, vegan, seasonal, local, fair trade cafe on the local market with raised beds full of unusual veggies. Funding for this was partly through the now mythical MIT – Municipalities in Transition project, a brief time where we found workable, but simple and unchallenging synergies with the local municipality, with the support of great people within the Transition Network. MIT provided partial start up funding for the Transition Group to build itself into a constant visible presence in our community, which we still struggle to find the capacity – through COVID, energy crisis, inflation, and general demoralisation – to exploit to its full potential.

A bright spark in this story is that we now have a wobbly community business that is open twice a week for delicious ethical low-carbon lunches and offers amazing ethical catering to universities, civil organisations and international summer camps; these partners are all very supportive, as we help them make food part of their coherent message. This is the Transition Wekerle Community Cooperative 🙂 If everything goes according to plan, 2025 is the year we become a Local Food HUB, funded by and in cooperation with Budapest City Council, to pilot the idea of having a local catalyst entity for growing food and eating veg. In the meantime, we just keep cooking, sharing food stories, and working with great suppliers of organic food.

On another note, presently we are cooperating with a research group on enhancing local biodiversity, so we have a series of ‘pathway’ projects — how to…  with a couple of garden planning events in the pipeline. And we are still helping defend our woodland…

We can proudly say that from being a pioneer project we are now part of a local ecosystem where there are many regenerative initiatives; local packaging free shop; bi-annual garage sale FESTIVAL which about 3000 people attend; many local food box schemes; 5 community gardens in our district…

That, I can say, is our story so far.. and below, here is how we started…

The Klímabarát Wekerle project started about in 2008 on the initiative of the local community association – Wekerle Társaskör, with support from local NGOs such as the Védegylet. After achieving official status the name was changed to Átalakuló Wekerle – Transition Wekerle

Here you can see photographs of the different events and read accounts of the programmes we’ve initiated. We’ve used the Transition methdology to organise ourselves, something made easier by the fact that Wekerle, as Europe’s largest Garden City, has a built and natural environment that strengthens community bonds. Information and good ideas spread easily; there is a sense of ‘village’ life, in spite of the fact we are a suburb of 2 million-strong Budapest.

2009-10: We started by working to catch peoples’ imagination through community events such as the “Green Saturday“, where there is a mix of the practical with the inspirational: come along and make something, eat something, share something, learn something… The “Green Shoot” night is a forerunner of the workgroups we’d someday like to have, actively bringing together those who share a common interest, be that cycling or sustainable building. The “Garden Circle” was formed to promote local food sovereignty, and people are getting excited about the ideas of community gardens. The “Kör Knitting Circle” is knitting together the hearts and souls of local people, also organising recycle art events. The “Energy Brigade” is the first really hands-on project for energy efficiency, training people to insulate their own windows and doors.

In 2011- we were awarded the ‘Green Kispest District Award’ from the municipality for our contribution to local environmental awareness.

In 2012 we took the step from circulating ideas to putting more practical projects in place to create opportunities for change. This included creating a Energy Efficiency and Renewable plan for the estate along with local architects which was adopted by the council in 2013. A similar study was also carried out into creative ways to solve the green waste ‘problem’ the district has, with recommendations for compost programmes, wood supplies for families in need, biomess energy production; the council has yet to act on this one, but we havent given up.

On the food front we set up a weekly organic box delivery / CSA scheme with 40-60 regular deliveries. We also teamed up with a small farmer’s association to create a weekly, after-work farmer’s market. We also use the market square to hold regular flea markets and similar “wealth creation” and waste reduction events.

Supporting local kitchen-gardening is one of our priorities, as well as protecting agricultural biodiversity, which was realised in a heritage tomato plant adoption scheme, where 300 tomatoes were ‘adopted’ by local gardeners and their seeds collected for replanting and distributing. The beginning of 2013 saw our first Seed Swap with about 100 participants and loads of enthusiasm.

Presently school dinners are a key focus with a well-organised local campaign to get decent food in schools. We contributed to the set up of Budapest’s first community garden on council land, and we support local schools and nurseries in setting up kitchen gardens and planting heritage fruit trees. We are also running an organic gardening course for local gardeners.

It’s a dynamic but demanding process, and at the beginning of 2013 we have roughly 15 regular activists who have a daily involvement with one project or service or other; there is a wider group of 20-30 people who help out at events; there is – most importantly – a growing part of the local population who benefit from the organic food scheme and weekly local market, contributing to the broader cultural change we would like to see. The process has largely grown beyond the initiators and is working to strengthen cooperation with an ever broader range of local and other projects and organisations. Part of this is supporting and coaching other new initiatives, responding to requests for information and interviews and creating opportunities for local community initiatives that appear to be heading in a similar direction to learn and grow with each other in the hope of catalysing wider change.

Key steps in development

We’ve had help from a lot of places. We are the first community member of the Hungarian Union of Climate Friendly Towns and the first community initiative to take inspiration from the Transition Movement, adapting it to the local context. Things are going well, and others are also drawing ideas from us.

Transition was first talked about here when Ervin Menyhart of Transition Coventry came to the Védegylet’s summer school in 2008. A follow up training was organised for 5 people in England in 2009, where we had an express introduction to Transition with Jenny in Bath, and also a training in organising skills with Seeds for Change and People and Planet, who have similar methodologies. Transition Scotland has also been very helpful in sharing ideas and contacts, which has provided a lot of inspiration.

The Global Projekt translated and distributes “In Transition” (Átalakulásban), coupled with a “community brainstorming”, to help bring out some of the ideas in the film: this project may grow into a HUB initiative, but it’s too early to say yet…

Presently we are looking at the possibility of an exchange visit, to let us have a better look at what people are working on, and also to show what is happening here: while it may not be called transition, there are a lot of community-strengthening low-tech projects which share a similar goal.