What is our initiative about (a short presentation of the issue and situation)?
There exists a risk of disappearing of natural resources and traditional husbandries of the unique territory of Mejlimanie. It could be transformed to the urban appendix of the mega polis due to the unlimited expansion of the city.

Such situation is a typical challenge for many other places in Ukraine now. The place we live in is surrounded by Black Sea from the South, and two lakes - Hadgibey from the West and Kuyalnik from the East. Distance between these two lakes - from 1 to 3-4 Km. Kuyalnik has salt and Hadgibey has sweet water. Both have important relationship with the whole ecosystem around Odessa.
This place is unique from many points of view and first of all by intensive co-activity of four first elements and harmonious coexistence of earth, plants and animals. It is pity but now human beings industrial and urbanization activities are destroying historically harmonious coexistence of the four natural realms.
In this destroyed coexistence the relationship between human being and water plays a specific role. Sea, lakes and hot summer made it possible for many many years that natural water turnover was very active in this place. And it offered renewed living forces to plants, animals and human beings. Water was circulating - up from the sea and lakes and down to the hills. Where it was accumulated due to mineral substances - shell stone and clay - and came down from the top of the hills to the valleys where natural pasturing and gardening were traditional activities for that place. It is well known that Hadgibey was a provisional basis for all military troops and castles of the Northern Black Sea coast during the long period when this territory was under Turkish Osman Empire jurisdiction. Till our days there secured shadow valleys with springs which come through fields, villages and pastures and fall to the lakes.

Kuyalnik is lower than sea level - (minus) 4 meters. Hadgibey is a little higher than sea level. The tops of the hill between these two lakes is 60-65 meters . The name of the main and highest hill there is Jivahova Gora - Jiva means life, or "to be alive". Jivaha - name of some old God or Natural Spirit (Genius Loci) who was a master of this territory. Jivahova Gora - (Gora- mountain) was a holy place of a spiritual service of people who lived here, where they prayed or did offers etc.

The latest human activities intervention and industrial expansion started to destroy this natural harmony.

Below are some reasons of the lost harmony Way of cultivating earth - it is monopoly of crop cultures and almost all agricultural earth is totally ploughed. Before there were a lot of grape and fruit trees, now they are Decrease of number of cattle - even 25-30 years ago there was about 4000 cows and about 2000 sheep only in the area of our local council, which is only a small part of the Mejlimanie. Now there is more than ten times less - only 350 cows. Cow pasturing created a balance needed for sustainable coexistence of the earth, plants, animals and human being activities.

Misuse of water in the river of Kuyalnik and other rivers of the Kuyalnik and Hadgibey basins. There are a lot of artificial water collection lakes on these rivers and it negatively impact on the water level in the lakes, especially in Kuyalnik which is closed from other water sources. Illegal open mining of sand for construction purposes from the beaches of Kuyalnik Lake and Big Kuyalnik river. It led to cutting of the river from the lake. To reach other bank of the river those who mine the sand built up a damp between the two river sides in the very up of the lake. In this place river was semi dried but nevertheless because of this water cannot come down.

What is the main idea of the initiative?
We try to develop a new type of settlement, which will be convenient place for living and working for people who choose a way of thinking, feeling and acting alternatively to the existing manner of urbanized and consumer oriented ways of existence.
To realize this we need change of the attitude towards land use among our initiative group representatives and other people who could be potentially involved. We all need to receive access to knowledge and skills related to new approaches in working on earth.

To implement this we organized our initiative as a Land University of Mejlimanie - free, independent "learning by doing" educational entity. It will execute imitative of the revival of the rural communities, lands and water of the Mejlimanie as a part of the basin of the Black Sea. To execute its purpose Land University will establish Study Farm using biodynamic - recyclable farming - approach in work with plants, earth and animals. It will also organize the Agricultural Research Laboratory which will use chromatography and other methods in comparative studies of the conventional, organic and biodynamic ways of keeping animals, gardening and work with soil and water. One of the most important concerns of the Study Farm and Laboratory should be investigation of the water circulation and rehabilitation and its impact on the crop, state of soil, plants and animals, quality of products. So we are planning to establish Water Investigation Center. Beside this, natural or agricultural direction, Land University will provide social initiatives. It will take care of elder people and provide an opportunity for people with special needs (handicapped people) and young and adult persons who had problems because of the alcohol or drug abuse. And it will be also in a way of developing new approaches which are alternative to those used in regular medicine and state health care and socials services.

The third should be initiative related to education and training of children of school age using contact with natural elements and plants, animals and stage on the recyclable farm. An important activity of the Land University should be Kitchen Science - revival of tradition of preparing foods from local products and culture of slow eating (trapeze).
Such initiatives and way of living and working are not only actual and historically proved. The idea of such recyclable husbandry and way of living is deeply imbedded in the traditions of nationalities who lived in the South of Ukraine. These traditions are: specific connection with earth, deep understanding of its motherhood and spiritual nature, economical individualism (autonomous husbandry) and political pluralism (collective or collegial forms of decision taking).

Though this new settlement starts from the Old Emet village, due to the activity of Land University of Mejlimanie its borders in future would spread within the valley of the Kuyalnik Lake. We hope that in the future villages of the neighbor rural councils around the Kuyalnik will share our vision and decide to join our initiative. (Some contacts with farmers and rural councils" representatives of these neighbor communities have been already established).

What is the experience of cooperation with local governments?
Within the development of the initiative there were undertaken the following steps toward the cooperation with local governments.

Project Proposal "Club in village of Old Emet as an instrument of development of new Ukrainian village " was submitted to the Ukrainian Foundation of Local Governments in 2008 and became a winner. But financial resources about 90 000 UHR allocated to the local council were not used by the rural council. Reasons were - low professional capacity of servicemen, absence of general rural planning and lack of understanding between public and government and between governments of different levels.

Old facility objects are studied and reconstruction is planned there according to the scheme of general development of the village. Purposes of these objects should be not only agricultural but also related to the cultural, curative pedagogical and social ones. (See the map attached).

There were also meetings organized with private farmers of the neighbor - Ivanovskiy - rayon - in the village of Belky which is 20 Km from our village to the North. Together with Torgny Walden, Swedish specialist in biodynamic farming we made a short presentation of biodynamic approach and it caused interest.

How much land and space we have currently and how realistic is to have more?
People, who take part in the initiative have in general about 3.5 hectares of good agricultural earth in private ownership and some houses, two of them need some reconstruction. All yards where members of initiative group live have quite a big space to organize gardens and to keep domestic animals and birds.
The village has land which could be taken in rent, but it is not done yet because there is no plan of the village and officially operation with land is prohibited. That is why we started the developing plan of socio-economic development and general spatial/architectural plan of the territory. See the maps attached.

The earth "given" to us by head of state agricultural enterprise A. Baranov has 7 hectares and old state facilities has around them about 2 hectares of land.

Our local government - rural council - agree to provide about 15 hectares of agricultural land which is reserve land of the rural council - to our biodynamic farm with research and training directions.

Also there is earth which belongs to the zone of Kuyalnik which is special natural object. On this earth pasturing of animals, birds and bee keeping could be organized. According to general planning these earth could be part of future ecologically recyclable biodynamic husbandry. It belongs to the local community now. The space of this natural pastures are quite big, it is about 200-220 hectares , in former times there were pasturing 2000 ships all year round and 350-400 cows in summer period. Now only cattle of the village habitants is pasturing there, it is about 50 goats and sheep and about 10-12 cows and bulls. So the pasture can "feed" much more animals . And this pasture is right near to our houses and one can use it freely. It needs no permissions or something like that.
There are also some empty old farms around in the village here. They are signed by red color on the map attached. They have old semi destroyed buildings and earth around about 0,40-0,70 hectares each. We are going to by some of them and searching resources now. Prices are very different and it is a special topic to discuss with interested parties. We invite other interested people to by these houses with land in our village which could be used later in purposes of - 1) pansion for elder people 2) experimental biodynamic farm with school on the earth and 3) place for preschool and school age children with residential part for pupils and their families - like playing educational garden or yard. We have among buildings which are for sale here in Old Emet those ones which are more suitable for one of these purposes mentioned above.

Why we launched a process of development of program of the socio-economic development?
According to our Law of self-government local community can adopt plan of socio-economic development as a terms of references to a general plan of spatial/territorial development.

Other experienced architects and experts take part in the developing of draft general planning document, This draft general plan would be terms of reference for the creation of real general plan.

Community of the rural area (including Old Emet village and maybe some villages and husbandries of the territory of Marinovka Local Council) adopts the plan of social and economic development. Draft general plan is integral part of his plan of social economic development.

By Law of Ukraine on Local Self-Government and Law on the Architectural activity and other state documents local council must adopt such a document developed by the local community and submit it to the upper level of government for attraction of financial resources for the developing of general plan.