On 15-17 August the first meeting of the project "Environmental challenge accepted" took place in Tartu, Estonia. This project is coordinated by our Latvian member BALTA DABA. This is a strategic partnership project which is supported by the Erasmus+ programme and will last 1.5 years. During this project several partners will work on solving local environmental problems with young people. You can read more about the project here.

The first meeting of the team was organised and hosted by one of the partners of the project – Estonian Fund for Nature. 2 representatives from each partner organisation met for the first time to discuss the project, plan next steps, agree on practical arrangements and get to know each other better.

On the first day there was a small team-building activity, presentation of partner organisations and discussion of details of the project – forming local volunteer groups, choosing local environmental problems and ways of solving them. YEE will coordinate the international campaign of this project – it will encourage young people to share their achievements in solving local environmental problems.

Second day was dedicated to field trips. Unfortunately, the weather was not the best for being outside for the whole day – but it didn't stop us from visiting the big national park Lahemaa. There the representatives of the Estonian Fund for Nature presented to us one of the problems which they want to focus on – the nearing extinction of freshwater pearl mussels. Apart from going to the river with these mussels, we also had time to visit famous Estonian bogs – in this case Viru Bog. On the last day we also made another trip – to the wetland system which was created by the Estonian Fund for Nature not far from Tartu.

This meeting was a great start to this project – we are looking forward to working on it together with BALTA DABA and other partners and sharing the results with our network.