Thursday

This day started with a 30 minutes’ walk by the Malvern links station and then continue by train to Worchester city. We had a guided tour at the cathedral and some free time in the city as well.
It has been very nice to have a look at some other places in England, especially this city because it seems to be a good example of what this country look like.
Soon we will get company from another NYFC club. Hopefully they will show us some new really enjoying games.

Evening

After this hard working day we were able to walk up to the top of the “northern hill” mountain in the moonlight to enjoy the silence and the view. Back at the hostel it was nice to just have some soft time and socialise.

Wednesday

During the day we worked out solutions of different questions from the businesses we visited yesterday. We were split up in groups to focus on one problem each. The solution for wiggly wigglers to get more profit from the bird seeds might be increasing the prices or develop products for new customers for example pet owners. All of the businesses are able to develop their activity on social medias to get marketing almost for free an meet new customers. Of course you can always work with the costs to increase the profit. There are always things like lamps and machines running when they don’t necessarily need to.

games and stuff...

Tuesday evening

The NYFC (National young farmers clubs) came to visit us for teaching some games. We were about to build a tower with spaghetti and marshmallows and send a piglet round standing in a circle (I am not going to tell you the point of this game, but I really think you will enjoy it if you try).

Visiting businesses

Tuesday

Today I’ve visited three rural businesses at the local area. One rural shop, one farm restaurant with B&B and one farm with specialities on flower and gardening business. They’ve all got different specialties but I think the farm restaurant with B&B was the most interesting.

“Hopes of longtown” is a village store with focus on local made products and social community for the people living in this area. It’s nestled at the foot of the black mountains in South-West Herefordshire. When moving around I was thinking about how do they actually get customers and why should someone ride a couple of miles just for shopping?
They do have some marketing by the social medias and the focus customer departs on seasons. In the summertime it’s mostly tourists and visitors. But the rest of the year their usual customers are local people living in the area. They also do corporate with some other organisations by having events in the area to get people a reason for visiting.

Most of the products are made in the local area and that makes that it often has a higher quality than products for example in the big warehouses.
Their biggest threats are some farmers markets close to the shop. But there is a difference in that the farmers market has to have testing and more personal selling.

Another rural business is the “White Haywood Farm Restaurant”. It’s set in a 400 year old barn near the Olchon Valley in Craswall, South-West Herefordshire. This company use to feed lambs for using in their food. The restaurant is opened 3 days a week for lunch, but they recommend you to reserve a place anyway. It’s owned by a Pauline and Philip Goodwin, who both has a background in the farming and cooking business.
It all started when they were able to by the farm from relatives, and in 2006 they established the company. All since the start-up it has been going well and there are always people visiting for lunch. The number of lunch depends from day to day but it seems to be between 2 and 50.
If you want to stay by night the can give you a room in the B&B placed at the loft of the barn for a worth price.
The farm cultivates about 980 acres of land and it produces almost every food for the restaurant.
For the future they want to have bigger facilities to make the work easier and expanding the business. This may be a bit difficult because of the nature and neighbours. They have tried social media for marketing, but because of the weak internet signal that often becomes kind of difficult.

The last business to report from is “Wiggly Wiggers”. It’s a company promoting self suffiency and natural gardening. They’ve got 500 hectares of land in a distance of maximum 25 miles away from the farm. Wiggly Wiggers use to grow wheat and flowers. The flowers are main product which is marketed by their internet page where the customers are able to choose exactly witch kind of flowers they want for their bouquet. The wheat is used to make natural gardening products.
The B2B customers are recently built on a long way traditional relationship with trust deals. The company has about 10 people working and they often work at the local place near to the customers, why they use Skype to communicate.
Maybe the name makes it difficult for the customers to find the company because it does not really refer to flowers, but they are on social media and so on to make it more common.

The day has been very interesting and we have got some problems to solve for the companies during the seminar. This companies are very good examples for hoe to make the rural area alive.

Folk dancing

Monday evening

During the Monday evening we had a visit from a folk-dancing team. The entertained some of the common folk-dances from England and the one I am always going to remember might be “three jolly sheepherds”
It was very funny to learn some new dances and activities that might be able to practice at home.

to be continued...

Because of the weak internet and wifi signal, I couldn’t update the blog exactly at the right time. That’s why I wrote it down to hopefully be able to update today.

Next thing to do will be "ice breaking games" then I think all of us will fall asleep immediately :-O

The ice breaking games were funny. The focus seemed to be learning more about each other. For example we had to put all the badges in the middle when standing in a circle. Pick up random badge and find this person to explore some common questions for learning more about each other. It was fun to learn other kind of games, and I will definitely use some of them at home for our activities.

Good night!

Sunday

Today we finished the presentation experience.
I am from the 4H in Sweden. We are working a lot to get young people a nice and meaningful free time. 4H is about head, heart, hand and health, something the activities often are focusing at. The vision is learning by doing, why we often have practical doings next to the theoretical learning’s.
Sweden is placed in the north in Scandinavia, next to Norway, Finland and Denmark. Famous companies are for example IKEA, Volvo and Saab. Also the forest-industry is a very important part of Sweden. There is about 9 million people living in Sweden of who about 12 000 are members of the Swedish 4H.
It was really interesting to learn about the other countries and their different organisations.
This was also a funny thing to do so the conversation started to get better and we learned more about each other.

After lunch we played “team-building-games”. We could try different activities in this area, for example climbing up a pole and standing 4 persons 18ft up in he are on a platform with size of a pizza. That was a little bit scary.
Most of the activities seemed to have focus on corporation. Now you directly could see who is the first man, always talking with the best ideas (maybe he are not the best when you received victory).

Tonight we had the international buffet. The participants from each country brought some special food and drinks from their home area and all of this together made a big buffet. This was interesting and fun because i haven’t expected that the food was that different in Europe, we are all almost neighbours.
Because this was the first time with RYE I only read the instructions and packed after these. I could imagine that the reality of the buffet was a little bit different from the instructions, so maybe the prep team (for the next time) are able to look at the instructions once more to see if something is good to change for easier understanding.
After the buffet we were possible to play games and get a drink to be social or whatever you wanted. I think this was a very funny evening.

Monday

Today we met some visitors from a bank who worked with business specialities. Also the prep team let us discussing about business planning and what is an entrepreneur.

If you want to be an entrepreneur, you have to be innovative. Think about what do you want to do and how to get there. Of course also the funding and cash flow are important things to look at. A very important thing to remember is that you have to really understand what you’re doing and so on, because otherwise maybe no one would believe in you when you’re looking for money and customers.
In the afternoon somebody came in talking about Social Medias and how can we use them for marketing. I am not going to explain every tip here but probably I will use the knowledge at the work in my organisation at home.