Apples and pears
Asylum seekers and locals harvest fruit together
The Styrian Eisenwurzen Nature & Geopark sees itself as an important regional initiator for raising awareness and imparting knowledge at all levels, be it nature and landscape conservation or strengthening regional identity. Integrating asylum seekers into the daily lives of the local population by demonstrating our language, culture, community spirit and management of cultural landscapes is a contribution to this endeavour. This project is based on “Landscape management”, the last point mentioned above. In the St. Gallen Nature Park community, the Nature Park was able to successfully bring the local population and asylum seekers together in order to jointly carry out fruit-picking activities in selected orchards. These activities were carried out with asylum seekers from Sankt Gallen in October 2016. All persons involved, be it asylum seekers, orchard owners or locals, responded favourably on the project.
Efforts to integrate people who come from a migrant background into regional activities will continue in order to take a first step towards a successful integration by the means of non-profit work. For further information on current fruit-picking activities, please click here.
If you have any questions or require further information on this project, please e-mail us at naturpark@eisenwurzen.com or call +43 3632/7714. Further activities are planned for coming years.
This project is supported by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management of Styria and the European Union.
