Take Action to Protect Nature

The Earth and the environment call for help but not enough people take it seriously. Nowadays not only European countries but countries all over the world are facing many global challenges and environmental issues. This is the period of overproduction and overconsumption which has a great negative effect on our environment such as climate change and pollution, which negatively affects the quality of life. According to European Commission information, Europeans are currently using 16 tonnes of material per person per year and 6 tonnes of this amount becomes waste. Despite the fact that the waste management is improving in EU, Europe still loses a lot of potential secondary raw materials that could be recycled and used again. In 2010, the total amount of waste produced in EU was 2,5 billion tons and just 36% were recycled and reused. In spite of the fact, that most of the waste is recyclable, substantial amount is sent to landfills, which results in methane emissions and thus are contributors to climate change (source: Eurostat). Apart from landfills, significant amount of waste ends up in the oceans and islands of waste are created. One of the most serious problems of modern society is waste pollution that negatively affects quality of people´s lives. Young people are becoming more aware of the need for environmental protection but usually they do not know how to transfer it to their everyday life. In our opinion the most of what we can do in favor of environment is to live consciously and green in our communities, in our household. For this reason, the 8-day long exchange - in which 36 young people aged 18-30 + 1 leaders from country from Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Lithuania and Denmark take part - aims to show the youngsters what is their ecological footprint and how big is it, that with the lifestyle they live how big part of the planet is needed to provide them with food, energy, fuel, etc. Further aim is to make them realize that everybody can do something to protect the environment, to slow down the climate change. We will calculate their impact then they can discover during the activities what they can do to help our earth, to reduce their footprint. By encouraging them to do so, we would like to make them active citizens.The program is a combination of different activities which are connected to the questions of the ecological footprint quiz and in such way they touch 5 topics: housing, meal, transport, shopping, waste. During these activities young people can gain new experiences, acquire new skills, then make new friendships, contact and have an impact on local people and get to know each other’s culture. A lot of different non-formal learning methods will be applied: games, workshops, outdoor activities, group work, debate, role-plays, round-table and brainstorming. We paid attention to provide them many possibilities not only to discuss the topic but also to learn a lot of things by doing.We want to raise awareness with all the young participants of the project about the environmental protection, ecological footprint that is why a short film will be made at the end of the exchange to call upon the people to live green, save our planet. The film will be presented on the local activity, but there will also be a leaflet edited about the comparison of the ecological footprint calculation's results of the participants/countries & the participants' ideas about how to reduce their footprint and posters made by the participants which will be spread and exhibited on the local activity as well.

Other Objectives of the project are:

• to raise awareness about environmental problems;
• to encourage and motivate young people to become active citizens in their society;
• to improve participants´ media and promotion skills to be able to have impact on wider community and to share project results on international level;
• to promote Erasmus + opportunities, intercultural cooperation and non-formal education;
• to enable participants to work in intercultural environment to discover new cultures and countries and hence increase tolerance and acceptance of diversity;
• to improve participant´s ability to work in a group and to cooperate.

Project coordinator: 

• ULUSLARARASI ARASTIRMA INOVASYON EGITIM VE GIRISIMCILIK DERNEGI - Turkey

Project partners:

• IYER - International Youth Empowerment Randers - Denmark
• SC MIXT SOURCE MANAGEMENT SRL - Romania
• Sdruzhenie Mozaika - Bulgaria
• Asociacija "Aktyvus jaunimas" - Lithuania
• WYŻSZA SZKOŁA BIZNESU I NAUK O ZDROWIU - Poland

How to contact with us?

Contact to institutional coordinator: j.komorek@medyk.edu.pl 

Application form is available through this https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeewmrmi9yZ5GUyL-w42t-TW_nmqApC25GUazmrPq3NXFfbBA/viewform?usp=pp_url or by downloading the file below. Please send the filled file to the institutional coordinator.