About Transition Wekerle

 

 

Our passion with Wekerle Estate 

Our local community is the 100-year-old Wekerle suburb of Budapest, designed by a Transylvanian architect, of whom we are all so proud. There are fairytale houses with brightly coloured shuttered windows that surround a central square and radiate out throughout this garden city district. Every avenue is lined with 100-year-old trees. It resembles a small village, with its compactness, within-reach shops and markets, kindergartens, schools, family doctors and playgrounds.

 

Around 9000 people live in this neighbourhood: many of them are young couples with children, who establish strong ties exactly because of their children - children that attend the same school, play in the same streets and playgrounds and whose future they are worried about. No wonder they are characterized by a strong sense of “togetherness”, activism and awareness of both history (their homes) and future (their children). However, it is far from an isolated, inward-looking community: it has attracted several people from other countries and cultures, who have settled and become as local as their next-door neighbour. So it is also no wonder Wekerle has been the first Hungarian community to join the international Transition Towns movement and is compassionate about supporting other, less well-off families living outside its borders.   

 

 

What our initiative is about

 

Transition Wekerle is a key member of the Hungarian Transition initiatives (a network called Small Communities in Transition) and is also the member of the international Transition Towns movement. It relies heavily on the cooperation of individuals, local NGOs and local institutions. It focuses on local food, local energy and local economy in order to lighten our eco-footprint, promote active citizenship, new ways of cooperation and solidarity. Our projects include improving the energy efficiency of old homes through insulation, collecting fruit and vegetable donations at the local market for poverty-stricken families and promoting urban gardening by organising seed-swap events.

 

 

 

Quote from a participant:

“Transition Wekerle is a great community, where you can put your ideas into practice and find partners for it. We, in a project called Vegetable Commando, came up with the idea of collecting small amounts of vegetables, fruits and other food as donations from shoppers at the local market and then deliver them to disadvantaged families living in or near the Wekerle estate. People were really enthusiastic about the idea so it was quite easy to find participants through our e-mail newsletter and FB page.”

 

 

Quote from one of the first master's theses at Corvinus University Social Enterprise department:

"local people have commented that they are happy to be involved with Transition Wekerle, as they are not the usual "moany greens", rather offer practical inroads into sustainable living."

 

Best Practise examples

• Garage Sale Festival is a great event with about 10-15 garage sales in the Wekerle estate at the same time. Perfect for selling/giving away unwanted household items so that others may re-use them and we can reduce our eco footprint. It is also excellent for socialising, making new connections in the neighbourhood.

• Compost-friendly district: this project is implemented in cooperation with the municipality and consists of distributing compost bins for families free of charge, sending regular composting newsletters by e-mail and promoting composting at local events

• Adopting tomato seedlings: it is implemented in cooperation with the Plant Diversity Institute, which provides different variants of tomato seedlings, which are distributed to locals at the Earth Day festival. After planting, the local gardeners collect the seeds of their crop and return some of them to the organizers.  

 

 

Membership of local, national, international networks

 

We are a member of the international Transition Towns network and the Hungarian Transition initiatives (Small Communities in Transition).

Transition Towns aim at tackling peak oil and climate change by building resilient communities. They focus on local economies, local food and energy sources, energy efficiency and environmentally friendly households and transport.The Small Communities in Transition is intentionally diverse, including urban communities, roma and eco-villages, many already actively creating low-carbon lifestyles. They share skills, experience and visions and encourage each other’s work. A central team of mentors support participating communities to implement the good practices they learn from one another.