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Go green, go volunteers!
Go green, go volunteers!
Start date: Jan 1, 2016,
End date: Feb 28, 2017
PROJECT
FINISHED
Szatyor Association is a meeting point of people interested in sustainable lifestyle, that is to say, a link between conscious consumers and local farmers or small-scale manufacturers. Furthermore we show the urban people what they can do for their environment at home and at their workplace. Our community has been developing for eight years with the help of local volunteers, who take part in the everyday tasks. The progress has been accompanied by an increased interest, therefore we have started projects with a broader perspective. These projects concerned several topics, such as the enhancement of environmental consciousness, the promotion of conscious consumption, environmental education, information sharing, monthly newsletters, visits to the local farmers, green legal counselling, the support of healthy living, and cooperation with other similar associations. The informal shopping community became a registered association in January 2011, thus we have reached even more stakeholders with our projects.The ‘Go Green, Go Volunteers’ mobilises young people so that they can participate actively in the environmental challenges, adapt a more conscious lifestyle and stand up for positive changes. We involve our volunteers in a learning process, which contains certain practical elements, such as how to create our own garden, how to reuse creatively our everyday objects, how to prepare locally produced food, how to organise effectively an event, etc. We are also interested in feedbacks from the volunteers as they possess specific related knowledge and experience in the field. Going into details, during the project our volunteers will learn to organise workshops and other types of events, by participating both in the preparative and organisational phases, and making the best of their creativity and proactivity. Our project emphasises the importance of audio-visual documentation (photos, videos, presentations) used for the introduction of the farmers, ‘How it’s made?’ videos or photo exhibitions. One of the main goals of our project is to encourage young people in entrepreneurship as a solution for the high unemployment among the young. The time spent here helps the volunteers get to know better their competencies and abilities, acknowledge their values, and improve these skills so that they can start their own project in the future.We plan to host two volunteers with 6 hours of daily voluntary activity five times a week. These days may be on weekends, in these cases they receive a free day during the week.In our project the intercultural education will be supported by events and workshops, where the volunteers are also encouraged to present their home cultural peculiarities. Our methods help the participants enjoy and appreciate cultural differences. In addition, we seek possibilities where our volunteers can collaborate with other volunteers and other young civil activists. This issue will be highlighted during mentorial support and on the weekly meetings. As a result the activity of our volunteers might show locals a good example of both tearing down stereotypes and emphasising that work and education may go hand in hand. To summarise, there are two major goals of our project. First of all, we would like our volunteers to gain knowledge and practices about environmentally conscious consumption and to be able to engage these in their own local community as well. Presentations and videos made during the project will help to achieve these goals (these will be available on social web platforms). In addition, intercultural education and voluntarism are also to be highly promoted. In order to achieve this we will share all the results of the project on Erasmus+ website for dissemination and will also organise events where the volunteers can share their experiences. We believe that our aims might also help encourage civil activism and participate in mobility projects of the European Union.