Our past experiences as "Green youth's promoters": the Polish partner experience

Unesco Initiatives Centre is educating and promoting the global education by organising the international projects, seminars, trainings, as well as developing cooperation with institutions and NGOs on international level. We work mainly in Wroclaw, Lower Silesia, and generally in Polish-Czech-German cross-border region.

In 2015, ​18 students representing 8 schools participated in preparing local initiatives connected to Global Education Week. Global Education Week is an annual international educational campaign which idea is to familiarize young people with contemporary challenges and problems. The main aim is to stimulate their activity to build a better world, by showing them concrete engagement opportunities in their local community.

The project “This is your world as well” was organised in cooperation with Polish UNESCO Committee already for the 11th time. All the workshops conducted by our team were not only aimed at showing the youth different perspective, but also to show them methods which they can use in their schools to make workshops for their peers.

After the project management module participants were prepared not only methodologically bust also administratively to manage the Global Education Week. On the last day of the seminar, participants worked on their own mini-projects, which they later carried out in schools.

The Portuguese partner experience

12 Years of Brigada do Mar in Beach Cleaning:

BRIGADA DO MAR is a volunteering project that exists since 2009 and was born with the objective of implement actions to protect biodiversity and perform cleaning interventions in non franchised coastal areas. These activities are focus on sustainable development, through active participation of the citizens, following principles as environmental education, natural preservation, promotion of public health and sustainable and healthy life-styles.

Since December 2013, Brigada do Mar is officially a non-governmental environmental organization (NGO) and has 4 main areas interventions:

1. Beach Clean-up in isolated and contaminated areas;

2. Environmental Education and Eco Team building with children, Youngs and Adults;

3. Cooperation for Development with other NGOs at European and Overseas level;

4. Providing learning opportunities for young and adults through European mobility and cooperation projects

Since 2014 Brigada do Mar beach cleanups and actions have the support/sponsorship of the Portuguese President of Republic, what helps us to have a public and official recognition of the importance of the work of our volunteers for civil society. Our biggest action of beach cleaning in the last 12 years, is located between Melides and Troia Peninsula (Grândola Municipality), and until now had the support of more than 3000 volunteers “Brigada do Mar” (See Brigade) and around 50 different sponsors, that make possible to clean up every year approximately 45 kilometers of beach during 15 day’s and collect 20 to 30 tons of Marine Litter.

Brigada do Mar is a founder member of the Portuguese Association of Marine Litter and is also a member of the RSOpt - National Network for Social Responsibility.

Main activities:

At a National Level, Brigada do Mar promotes every year several initiatives:

• 15 days of Beach clean up in Grandola Municipality that in 12 years of this activity that already involved more than 3000 volunteers.

• Actions to raise awareness of good environmental practices among young, made in primary and secondary schools, and also in international conferences and seminars;

• Exhibitions about Marine Liter like: ATTITUDE a solution to ecological disasterst; showed in Grândola, Melides, Sines, Lisbon and Setúbal.

• Beach cleanups held in more than 15 Portuguese Municipalities;

• Eco Teambuilding’s with children's, youngs and adults;

• European Mobility projects under Erasmus+, acting as a sending and partner organization: Youth Exchanges, Youth Workers Mobylities and KA2 partnerships;

• Hosting Organization of International Volunteers from SCI - Service Civil International

Local Network: For our actions we normally work in cooperation with Local Municipalities, Maritime Police, Schools, other National and International NGO’s, Insurance companies, Banks, Radios, newspapers, foundations and we also get in contact with the Social and Corporate Responsibility’s departments of potential sponsors. Since 2009 Brigada do Mar initiatives were covered by several TV Channels (SIC, RTP, CMTV, TVI) and by national and local Radios, magazines and newspapers.

Other National and Local activities:

● Beach Clean up in Grandola Coastline - 45km:

● Azores - Faial Island:

● Eco Team Builds: Honda, Barclays, Bankinter, EDP, Repsol, Martini, Volvo

● World Cleanup Day

International activities:

Pro health and Nature: Our first concrete contribution was the realization of the youth exchange Pro health and Nature in Palermo in November 2015. During the youth exchange the 30 participants from 5 European Countries were involved in group activities for the deepening and exploration of topics as nature, recycling, the problem of waste, the promotion of an healthy lifestyle and in practical activities as the organization of our first Swap Party, video-spot shooting for social awareness, an event of street sweeping (the first in our city) and the organization of a street event (here the web-site of the project: https://youth-exchange.wixsite.com/prohealthandnature

Youth for Green Cities:

Almost at the end of this project, in March 2018, we organized another youth exchange: Youth for Green Cities in order to stimulate young people from different European Countries to initiate green actions in their cities: during the days in Palermo the inclusive and multicultural group of young people visited an accessible urban vegetable garden, made street sweeping and gardening actions, planned a model of 3D green city, created a facebook campaign to spread messages of environmental protection and organized some activities about environment for the pupils of a primary school (here the web site of the project https://youth-exchange.wixsite.com/youthforgreencities

ESDGC: http://esdgcproject.com

Education for Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship (ESDGC) was a partnership of 6 organisations from 6 European countries implementing an Erasmus + Strategic Partnership project to promote education for sustainable development and global citizenship in adult education.

Special events:

● Over Flow: The exhibition, called Over Flow, was commissioned by the Portuguese museum to draw attention to the proliferation of plastic debris in our oceans. The large-scale commission is made up of plastic waste as well as boats, collected on the country’s coastline by the volunteer clean-up group, Brigada do Mar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63voftZAao8

https://secretsfromportugal.com/maat-filled-plastic-reason/

● World Cleanup Day

Kick-off meeting of the project

On 7 and 8 October 2019, 2 responsibles from each partner organization met in Palermo to participate to the kick-off meeting of the project. It was a fruitful occasion to get to know or get to know better each other, discuss in deep about the project and its requirements in terms of activities but also management aspects, and to plan in detail the next activities both local (an activity of analys, whose results will be pubblished on this blog) and transnational - the Short Term Staff Training Event that will be held by Brigada Do Mar in December and will involve 3 participants per partner.