Roland Spendlingwimmer

Roland Spendlingwimmer, was born in 1946 in Freistadt, Oberösterreich. He went to primary school in Neumarkt in Mühlkreis. In 1966 Spendlingwimmer successfully completed the Freistädter Gymnasium and one year later began his university studies in natural resources and applied life sciences in Vienna. After 4 years he cancelled his agriculture studies and assumed the management of a self-governing juvenile centre ("HELIOPOLIS") in Vienna.
In the following years European settlements were founded in regions where seasonal migration takes place. In the summer of 1972 the first project in the south of France was launched and in cooperation with some young Swiss, English, French, Germans and Austrians the European cooperative Longo Mai is founded. During the next two years upgrading of Longo Mai's infrastructure, the agricultural assembly and its sheep farming took place. This year seven foreign Longo Mai members were evicted from France by the French Government. Other settlements in Switzerland, Germany and Austria have been built up.
In 1978 Roland Spendlingwimmer was invited by local government officials to Bangladesh and Djibouti in order to build up Longo Mai-like cooperatives there. The following year during the war against the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua he was asked to set up a cooperative for Nicaraguan refugees. In Costa Rica a piece of land was bought for this purpose and 50 families begin cultivating it.
At the beginning of the 1980s the conflict in El Salvador was at its height and many families fled to Costa Rica to settle down at the Finca Sonador. The majority of them stayed after the peace negotiations in 1997 and 2001, and the community now consists of 65 families (about 360 people).
Spendlingwimmer has been involved in Costa Rica for more than 20 years now. He supervises different social projects amongst which are the refugee cooperative "Finca Sonador", the project for prevention "Vida nueva" and the environmental initiative "UNAPROA".
On 12 December 2000 Roland Spendlingwimmer was honored for his long lasting involvement in Costa Rica with the prize for human rights of the state Oberösterreich. The award was presented by the head of the provincial government Josef Püringer.

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