AYA is a young non-profit organisation which was founded in Moscow in 2011 with the main aims to promote volunteering, charity and sustainable living. A group of friends wanted to create an organisation that would be independent, self-governed and transparent.

What do we do:

• organise international volunteer workcamps on the territory of Russia with promotion of conservation of Russian nature, sustainable living, environmental education and intercultural communication. Projects usually last 2 weeks during which international volunteers participate in various types of work and help local people thus doing something useful for small communities and at the same time experiencing intercultural communication and learning more about themselves and people around them. Every project is aimed at supporting the local ecological and social activists both with manual work and by integrating people in ecological problems of the area and explaining possibilities of eco-friendly development of the region.
• send Russian volunteers to international workcamps abroad. They can choose any kind of project in almost any part of the world. Volunteers have a chance to meet new people, learn more about different cultures and become closer to local communities.
• support social initiatives of volunteers and NGOs;
• run educational activities, distribute information about volunteering movement and charity work; run different workshops on recycling (including artistic recycling) together with explanation on how it can be important for the environment, e-volunteers/translators translate different useful brochures (for example, translating brochure for Rio 20+);
• organise cultural and social events aimed at promotion of peace movement, sustainable living, active citizenship among young people; participating in local events (weekends) in Moscow: cleaning up, planting trees, etc.
• host international volunteers for a mid-term volunteering project. They are working in the office of our organisation for several months and can participate in any activity of the organisation or develop their own project.

Employees and volunteers of AYA participated in tree planting action in May outside of Moscow. We helped local residents to plant small fir trees in order to restore some part of the local forest.
We also helped during the organisation of international ecological film festival "Ecocup" in Moscow. Volunteers translated films for the festival, helped as interpreters and organisers and also held the workshop on creating ecowallets from Tetrapak packages.
AYA also organised volunteer workcamp with Barents Ecology Film Festival, where international volunteers we helping the organisers of ecological film festival and we able to watch environmental films as well.
You can always find more information about our activities on our website ayavolunteer.ru