2014 Russland: Green City – Ecoactivism for change

Die russische Teilnehmerin Elizaveta berichtet über ihre Highlights der IB Russland 2014:

It was a great pleasure to be a part of the German-Russian Youth Exchange “GREEN CITY- ECOACTIVISM FOR CHANGE” (March/April 2014). This week was full of interesting events, fun, study and intercultural communication. German participants were open for new experience and new emotions while we tried to make their stay as comfortable, interesting and not boring as possible. We taught each other our languages and it was a surprise for me that some of Germans speak Russian really good and they asked us to talk with them in Russian cause they wanted to improve their language skills.

Eco-projects for a greener Perm

We divided into groups by 3 topics: waste, gardening and food and discussed projects that we would like to organize. Each group presented their ideas and some of them were really interesting and could be realized in Perm and in Berlin. For example my food team wanted to make a book of vegetarian recipes and also present alternative-to-supermarket ways of buying ecological products there. A part of this idea was to go to the central market in Perm. We also made some pictures of food there.

The Garbage Orchestra in the forest

During the exchange we had a lot of activities, excursions, debates, lectures etc. I cannot mention all the events of the project – there were plenty of them – but I must say a few words about the Earth Hour in the Chernyayevsky forest. We tried to attract the attention of citizens to ecological problems and especially to the problem of the Chernyayevsky forest. There were a lot of amusements as for example a quiz on ecological topics, competitions and hot drinks with muffins.

Notwithstanding the cold weather, we made a cute performance – the Garbage Orchestra played warming-up tunes, using plastic bottles, paper cups and glass jars as music instruments. It was Rhea’s and Sarah`s idea, thanks to them for conducting, rehearsing and teaching us how to make the things sound. At the end we made a big circle with hand-made light-emitting small lamps and said few words to the forest. There were a lot of people, really more than I expected.

I really enjoyed this exchange and can’t wait to see all the participants again in Germany in 2015.