News

Education on energy, Eco Logic, Macedonia

Organisation: Eco Logic

Dates: 01.01.2015 – 31.03.2016

The event took place in 21 elementary schools in Skopje

Description of the activity: As part of the project “Education on Energy”, 1000 children at age of 10 – 12 years participated in creative workshops related to the topics: climate change, environment, sustainable living and energy efficiency. Also, 60 members of staff of the targeted institutions, as well as 6 representatives of local authority bodies took part in these events. During these workshops the kids made numerous experiments to transform the water energy into electricity. At the end, they learnt about the importance of clean water supply, irrigation and hydro power production and most importantly, they learnt about the potential consequences of irrational water and energy usage upon the environment and the humanity.

http://www.ecologic.mk/Default.aspx#p=7066

Thermohaline circulation experiments, Argonauta, Croatia

Organisation: Argonauta

Dates: 10 November 2016

Description of the activity: Thermohaline circulation is a component of the general circulation of the ocean, which is controlled by differences in temperature and salinity. It is one of the most important processes and has a global impact on the climate of Earth. Without thermohaline circulation, life on Earth would not be the same. Circulation alternate deep sea water with water from the surface, and vice versa. Although this process is relatively slow, it is very important. Because when large amounts of water move, they exchange heat and nutrients throughout the entire world. To make this complex process easy to understand, we decided to use experiments. The first experiment was related to water temperature. Through a simple experiment in the aquarium with hot and cold water, we presented how water molecules behave and move. In this experiment, we have shown that the molecules run faster in warmer water and slowly in cold water. In the second one, we examined the salinity and density of water. To examine which has higher density at room temperature, sea or fresh water, we used eggs. As the egg is submerged in fresh water and float in seawater, we stated that seawater has a higher density. With the third experiment we tried to explain what is density of water. For this purpose we needed combination of various ingredients such as honey, soap, water, oil, etc. Like a real small scientists, Eco Patrol kids were using laboratory equipment and determined which of these ingredients had a higher density.

Water Monitoring Trip, YEE, Czech Republic

Organisation: Youth and Environment Europe

Dates: 27 October 2016

Aim of the event: This event is held annually and people all over the world can take part in it. The aim of this action is to raise awareness in water contamination issues among locals by means of checking and sharing the results of measuring. Once figured out the condition of the local water bodies, citizens can take action in order to maintain or change the current situation (and a year later, the measurement can be repeated to see the improvement). You can learn more about World Water Monitoring Day here and read a report about this action here.  

Description of the activity: YEE office team went to the small Czech town of Pribram to measure water quality in 5 different water bodies, according to the measurement scale of World Water Monitoring Day. After taking samples in each of the five ponds, we tested them in five different measures: air temperature, water temperature, dissolved oxygen, pH and turbidity. On the average, all five reservoirs are poor in dissolved oxygen, which suggests that these waters are not suitable for living creatures. Later all results have been uploaded to the official web-site of World Water Monitoring Day.

International Danube Day, Young Researchers of Serbia

Organisation: Ministry of Agriculture and Environmental Protection together with partners from non-governmental sector, such as Young Researchers of Serbia, WWF and others.

Dates: The event took place on June 29th on Danube river bank in Zemun, Belgrade.

Description of the activity: International Danube Day takes place every year in 14 countries of the Danube basin. This year the program was very various, but the most attractive parts were workshops for kids, learning about endangered species in Danube ecosystems, concert held by a children’s choir and YRS’s exhibition of winning entries of art competition “Danube’s Artist” for school kids.

Hike and sharing about fresh water resources, Georgia

Organisation: SAEM (Georgia)

Dates: 1-2 October 2016

Description of the activity: SAEM organised a hike to share experience about the topic of water protection, discuss fresh water resources, water life circle, and freshwater risks caused by climate change, how human actions can seriously affect water resources, etc. The participants learned from each other and decided to make some steps to organise future actions together.

The Borjom-Kharagauli National Park stretches across Samtskhe-Javakheti and Imereti regions of Georgia, covering more than 1% of the countries territory and more then 85 000 hectares of the most attractive pristine forest land. The park is one of the largest in Europe. The huge area of mountainous forest has been preserved here in its pristine and untouched state. A number of endemic and relict species of flora and endangered species of fauna can be found in the forests as well as among sprawling sub alpine and alpine meadows of the Borjomi-Kharagauli National Park. Borjom Kharagauli – National Park’s mountains are nature’s water towers giving the birth many springs...  SAEM wanted to take this opportunity to thank to the National Park director Levan Tabunidze and his team for support and doing great in protection nature  and supporting us during campaign.

Celebrating Drin Action Day, Albania

Organisation: EDEN centre with the support of MIO-ECSDE (Mediterranean Information Office for Environment, Culture and Sustainable Development)

Dates: DRIN River Basin, Shkodra Region, Albania on 5th of May 2016

Description of the activity: The Drin Action Day has been organized in frame of the Act4Drin project "Living well in harmony with the Drin" aiming to raise public awareness, enhance knowledge and empower NGOs to protect and conserve freshwater ecosystems in the Drin River Basin. Wide-ranging celebration was organized for the Drin Day in order to promote and raise public awareness about natural wealth and legacy of the Drin River Basin. During the celebration of the Drin Day we organized various actions with students and community that lives around the Drin River Basin in Shkodra Region, Albania. There are some of the actions that have been organised: 

Exhibitions by school students - Pupils presented various ideas on how the community should protect the river, reflected what they can do.
Educational activities - Various interactive games were organised by EDEN team using educative materials. Students were introduced to the natural values of the river and got interesting knowledge and facts about flora and fauna; risks that threaten the area from the people that abuse on the Drin River Basin.
Art and painting Contests - Students through the colorful posters and environmental poems about the rivers, transmitted awareness’ messages toward the community in order to protect the biggest and most important river in the country.
Promotion on social media.

General information:

European Commission: Water

Water Framework Directive

European Environmental Agency: Water

National Geographic: Water

UN: Global issues - water

UN: Water for Life Decade

UN-Water

UNEP: Water

Greenpeace: water

Water pollution:

Water pollution: an introduction

Infographic Water pollution

Infographic: How ocean pollution is harming your health

Trash pollution: 8 mln tons of plastic

What you can do:

Want to reduce water pollution? Here's how...

Simple rules to prevent water pollution

10 things you can do to reduce water pollution

25 Simple and Easy Ways to Reduce Water Pollution Now!

Water for people and nature

Join World Water Monitoring Day

Videos:

Water pollution

Why care about water?

Tap water: one of our most valuable resources

Water our most precious resource

Unesco: Protecting Water Quality for People and the Environment

What really happens to the plastic you throw away - Emma Bryce

Where we get our fresh water

Fresh water scarcity: An introduction to the problem - Christiana Z. Peppard

TED talks on water

Organisations working with water issues:

WaterAid

NRDC: Water Pollution Facts

Water Environment Federation

Water for People

The Water Project

Dates: September 2016 - February 2017
Countries: Countries of participating organisations
Type of activity: Grassroots campaign (without additional funding)
Contact: Natalia Luchko This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

YEE and SAEM (Georgia) collaborated to organise the international Water Campaign. We invited interested organisations to set up local actions to highlight the importance of water in our life. As part of the campaign we also invited YEE members to share their water-related projects and activities.

With this campaign we wanted to unite young people in Europe who are interested and concerned about the topic of water protection. We would also like to encourage more young people to pay attention to the issue of water pollution and to get involved in their local communities.

You can read about the water actions in the "Events".

Aim:

To promote and encourage youth participation in order to raise awareness about water protection.

Objectives:

• To raise awareness about water protection and importance on local and international level.
• To provide common space for young people concerned about the topic of water protection in order to share their experience, learn from each other and organise projects together.
• To present good examples of projects related with the topic of water protection.
• To increase capacity of young people to address local water issues.

EVENTS

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