Para todos e para sempre – The Portugese National Trust

Portugese National Trust

I recently had a long conversation with Raquel Fialho of the Portuguese National Trust. Raquel, a lawyer by training, has spent a long time getting all the building blocks in place to establish the ‘Fundação Nacional’. Inspired by the need for more effective and urgent protection of her country’s environment, the Portugese National Trust seeks to promote and conserve Portuguese heritage – built and natural – and bring about lasting change through education and awareness raising, economic development and effective legislation. Its motto is one we are all familiar with ‘Para todos e para sempre’ …

So far so good? The process of registration has been lengthy. Although assisted by INTO and colleagues at the National Trust, writing an acceptable constitution for a national trust when there is little experience or understanding of the concept has been a challenge, which Raquel has risen to. She was disappointed that she had to register the name as ‘Associação para a constituição da Fundação Nacional para a Conservação do Património Português’ but believes that with time ‘Fundação Nacional’ will be the logical shortening. (How many people know that the NT’s proper name is ‘The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty’?)

Driving the project forward with little funding and relying on the help of volunteers has been frustrating. But, as ever, difficult circumstances can bring innovative solutions and having waited ages for various friends to build the website, Raquel ended up teaching herself how to do it! We laughed about the website name www.fundacaonacional.pt. Cão means dog in Portugese so without punctuation: ‘National Trusty Dog’. I think there might be a logo or mascot in there!???

In fact, Raquel managed to get another friend to design the logo – not a dog in sight! She’s not sure it’s quite right yet but it’s a start. She has also begun, in the absence of any external funding (the economic situation in Portugal is still rather gloomy) or other support for the acquisition of property, to fundraise for the project and has opened an on-line shop.

I salute Raquel’s can-do attitude. This is the same volunteer spirit upon which other Trusts were built. Many started with a particular project or need and a group of staunch supporters (the more influential the better!) and followed up with a constitution, but it’s not always possible to work in that way. It’s certainly very difficult to open a bank account.

It would have been great if Raquel could have met the Caribbean National Trusts in Barbados. Many of the issues we discussed resonate across the globe and she would have felt part of the NT family. In September, INTO is holding its Executive Board Meeting in Galicia preceded by a fundraising walk. I’m hoping Raquel will make the journey up from Lisbon to join us so that she can bounce ideas off some of INTO’s other members. Sometimes our sister organisations can feel isolated and INTO’s role is to bring people together in the spirit of comradeship to share experience and expertise.

Panel at the 1st Caribbean Conference of National Trusts, Barbados May 2014

This is what is so special about INTO and the National Trust movement – big and small, old and new, different organisational models, different languages – all have an important role to play within the INTO family and can contribute new ideas in all areas of our work that resonate across the globe. The International Conference of National Trusts is a key platform for these discussions and we are looking forward to meeting again in Cambridge next year to review the role of The National Trust Movement in the 21st Century.