Ideas for Funding the School, and More All-year-round Residents!
Welcome to the Koster Islands webpage of Greenmapper Friends. It is a co-experiment by Kosterhavets nationalpark, Kosternämnden, Koster Sweden, and the University of Groningen. In order to involve more people to discuss about sustainable tourism, schools, and permanent residents on Koster Islands, we invite you to join Greenmapper Friends!
WIN AN OVERNIGHT STAY
Participate and have a chance to win a “Kläpphagen package”: dinner, one night stay and breakfast for two.
What is Koster-Greenmapper Project?
Koster-GreenMapper Project is based on an online scientific web-platform called Greenmapper. Greenmapper explore a new ways of systematic data gathering and a new way of seriously connecting people to the nature-related places and landscapes that they love. This serves to support better nature and tourism policy and management.
The Koster Islands are one of Sweden’s most beautiful and ecologically valuable archipelagos, attracting thousands of visitors each year. However, maintaining a vibrant year-round community is increasingly difficult due to limited access to services like education, housing, and healthcare. To help bridge this gap, we are creating a dedicated pledge fund to support sustainable local life — starting with Kosteröarnas Skola and other essential services that make year-round living possible. This is being done by three scientific phases: (1) pol.is polling that gathers public opinions towards Supporting the School through Sustainable Tourism (see Step 2); (2) virtual pledge funding about Keeping Koster Alive: Community-Supported Education for Year-Round Living (see Step 3); (3) an online roundtable meeting with citizen scientists to discuss the results (see Step 4).
How can I participate in the project?
This experiment works with Greenmapper. Everybody in Greenmapper first maps four of their favourite nature-related places on the map. Places with nature that they find attractive, valuable, or important.
Why do we ask for these four places?
First of all, these systematic data help protect the nature and landscapes you value. The open-access data and the scientific analyses based upon them can better inform landowners, policymakers and the community of fans about nature-related places that are highly valued.
Second, by mapping these places, you can choose to become part of the community of fans of those areas and provide support to them. Support with ideas or with financial funding.
Regarding the Koster Islands, we are interested in your ideas for attracting more year-round residents and your willingness, if any, to financially support the Kindergarten school.
Step 1: Put four favorite nature spots on the map via Greenmapper
To start mapping your four favourite nature places, you first mark on a map where you live. For privacy, you don’t mark your exact address, but approximately where you live. You can watch the short animation video to explain how this works.
Then you draw four favourite nature-related places on the map that are attractive, valuable or important to you. A place near where you live, a place in the region, a place somewhere in the country and finally a place somewhere in the world.
This drawing on the map is technically the trickiest part, so please take a moment to watch the animation video. Here we explain the technique of mapping your places. Once you know that, the rest is easy.
>>Click and see how to draw an area<<
Step 2: Participate in the discussion of more year-round visitors on Koster
Once you have placed the locations on the map, you will enter the GreenMapper Koster community. There you will find the so called Pol.is discussion. This discussion runs via voting on statements (‘Agree’, ‘Disagree’ and ‘Unsure/Pass’). You can also add new statements yourself if your feel your ideas have not yet been voiced, and then the community will vote on these.
Ultimately, we visualise what everyone agrees on and what they don’t, and whether there are different groups. We will keep you informed of the results.
Step 3: Participate in the virtual pledge funding
To secure Kosteröarnas Skola as a sustainable educational hub that enables families to live on Koster year-round, while building links between education and responsible tourism. We invite everyone to participate in a virtual pledge funding for Kosteröarnas Skola.
The goal of this virtual funding is to achieve 800,000 SEK (around 10,000 EUR). The funding will only be used to secure the continued operation of Kosteröarnas Skola, support staffing and infrastructure needs, and integrate the school’s role in sustainable community development and responsible tourism.
As a participant, please let us know how much you want to donate and what your opinions are. Once launched, annual financial and social impact reports will be published transparently via the school’s website and shared with all donors and stakeholders.
Step 4: Become a ‘citizen scientist’ and participate in an online roundtable meeting
Once our community reaches a sufficient number of friends, we will randomly select 10-20 participants for an online roundtable meeting, where fans, Koster partner organisations, and experts will discuss in depth the options for future action.
Disclaimer!
We feel we should give a warning! Yes, Greenmapper is a user-friendly web app designed for the general public. Still, it remains scientific software, with very limited funding and a very small technical support team. When compared to a simple written survey, Greenmapper stands out as a visually appealing and interactive tool. When compared to big tech applications, you may still find it far less fluent and user-friendly. Bear with us and our small team. Our means are limited, but our efforts, and yours (!), are noble.