embassy events

Seminar: "Fostering Stewardship of Cultural Heritage"

Partnership Foundation

The Office of Public Affairs, U.S. Embassy and the Environmental Partnership invite you and your colleagues to a seminar related to the project Fostering Stewardship of Cultural Heritage.

Presentations by:

Rolf Diamant, U.S. National Park Service
Branding and Marketing Traditional Products: Strategies for Sustainable Tourism and Preservation of Cultural Landscapes

Natalie Woodroofe, Association for Enterprise Opportunity
Small Town, Big Dreams: Using Entrepreneurship as an Economic Development Strategy

Radim Machů, Centre for Sustainable Rural Development
Projects for Sustainable Development in Rural Regions

Tomáš Kažmierski, Regional Environmental Center CR
Branding of local products in Krkonoše, Šumava and Beskydy – good practice of utilizing socio-economic benefits provided by protected areas

Tuesday, May 2, 10:30 – 13:00
Prague Woodrow Wilson Center, Tržiště 13, Praha 1

Simultaneous interpretation
Consecutive refereshment

Please RSVP by April 27
vagnerovah@state.gov , 606 654 063

Rolf Diamant is superintendent of Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park, a national park telling the story of conservation history, the evolution of land stewardship and the emergence of a conservation ethic. Located in Vermont, the park practices sustainable forest management on one of the oldest reforested woodlands in the America, and in 2005 was awarded the first Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification of a U.S. national park. In his 30 years with the U.S. National Park Service, Rolf has worked on new conservation strategies for national heritage areas, partnership parks and protected areas, wild and scenic rivers, and cultural landscape stewardship. He has undertaken a number of international assignments on behalf of the NPS, including park and protected landscape work in Poland and the Republic of Georgia. Most recently, Rolf has worked on a series of workshops and exchanges with regional and national parks in Italy on new conservation strategies for lived-in protected landscapes and heritage areas, focusing on sustainable tourism and branding and marketing of traditional products. Rolf is currently developing for the NPS an Atlas of Places, People & Hand-Made Products, illustrating stories about U.S. parks and protected areas working in partnership with local communities to cooperatively promote and market products that strengthen ties to landscapes and heritage.  

Natalie Woodroofe serves as Manager of Rural Initiatives for the Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO), where she collaborates with local organizations and communities on microenterprise and regional branding projects.  From 1994-2006 she was the executive director of the Women’s Rural Entrepreneurial Network (WREN) in northern New Hampshire, a non-profit organization focusing on microenterprise, community, and rural economic development. The WREN model is based on entrepreneurship, market creation, the aggregation of resources that can be shared by many, and connecting people with one another. Natalie and WREN played a key role in revitalizing a distressed rural community through collaborative efforts with a diversity of partners and funding sources. She currently serves on the boards for the New Hampshire Rural Development Council and the North Country Community Economic Development Strategy Council.

Radim Machů works for  the Center for Sustainable Rural Development - an educational and information facility developed by environmental NGO Veronica in Hostětin, White Carpathians.
He focuses on sustainable development projects, e.g. energy utilization of biomass and regional branding.

Tomáš Kažmierski is a project manager at the Regional Environmental Center CR (REC ČR), which focuses on projects improving quality of  the environment and sustainable development in Central and East  European countries.  For many years, Tomáš  has been involved in environmental  protection.  At present, he runs a project  Branding of Regional Products, to increase awareness of socio-economic benefits of protected areas and promotion of local communities. 

The seminar is organized by
Quebec-Labrador Foundation / Atlantic Center for the Environment (www.qlf.org)
Partnership Foundation (www.environmentalpartnership.org)
U.SU.S. Embassy Prague (prague.usembassy.gov)