Vocational day around Thy

I was very lucky to have three different parts to my vocational day around Thy (pronounced "tsoo") on Thursday 6 September.

My wonderful host-dad Verner (or Vernie after Wednesday night) accompanied me for the day, and firstly took me to visit Annette, who is the volunteer coordinator for Nationalpark Thy. The next few hours turned out to be extremely interesting for me, learning about the process of how the Nationalpark Thy came into existence, and how an open mind in regard to community involvement resulted in even the most fervent of opposers to the national park supporting its implementation.

With many varied opinions - from support to opposition - regarding the park, from the outset, the community was heavily involved. Working groups were formed in the early investigation stages to gather valuable information and ideas from key groups before a park in the area was even suggested to the government. This gave the local community a sense of ownership when the park was officially announced as Denmark's first in 2008.

From here, a board was formed to develop a paper and an activity plan for the six years from 2010 to 2016. The community were asked to input into this plan, with every single piece of feedback received being responded to. This just reinforced to me that the simplest of actions - responding to someone when they take the time to provide their feedback - makes a world of difference. The community felt listened-to, and this again helped to generate a sense of positivity around the park.

All this might seem very basic. But in reality, it doesn't happen all the time on projects that are going to have an impact on a community. The sense of pride that all the locals have regarding this park is enormous. And this, I believe, came from the fact that hey were able to be so involved from the very beginning.

The rest of my day was equally as interesting, visiting Landbo Thy, which is basically a consultancy specialising in working with farmers and helping to manage their business. They have just moved into a new building which is similar in layout to mine back at home, and it is lending itself to allowing all the different businesses to work very collaboratively to get their job done as efficiently as possible.

I finished off the day with Otto, who is a project leader at the Thisted Kommine (essentially Thisted Council). He drove me all around the municipality and explained to me some of the projects they were working on and showed me some of the beautiful parts of the area. What I was most impressed about, however, was the app that has been developed by the Council to showcase the different energy initiatives in the area, as well as their diverse natural environment. It's a fabulous tool to give visitors an overview of the many great parts that make up Thisted Kommine.

All in all, a really enriching and valuable vocational day!