Organizing and realizing the Eco fest from my point of view
by Laci Bodnár
During my being here in Bulgaria we made a lot of nice things, but the most important and the most interesting was definitely the Eco fest what we organized. It was great experience for all of the 15 volunteers participating in the project „Ecology development part 2”.
The festival was held near to city Kazanlak in the place called Koprinka dam. Even it is a artificial lake, it is a very important part of the surrounding nature. The importance of the dam is not only about the regulating the water supplies, it is also a very famous place for tourists, and especially for people from surrounding cities and villages. The lake is very ideal for water sports, fishing, and swimming or just simply for having a good time. But unfortunately all of these activities left they mark on the nature. In the case of the Koprinka the biggest problem is with the rubbish left by people. Lot of local organizations was trying to do something against this problem, but unfortunately without success. I think that it is a global problem and the people should change they thinking and they attitude. But the question is how? According my personal opinion the best way how to teach the people is connected with the education and organizing different events. In the end of the April we organized an eco festival Koprinka. The main goal of the festival was the cleaning the surrounding nature from the garbage. The festival was organized second time. For me it was a big pleasure to take a part in the creating of the event. I think the best experience for a young person is to work together with people from different countries and with different ages. The reason why I am writing is that even we are all the same, but still we are a bit different. Everybody shared they own experiences, and we were trying to made a multicultural event, and in fact it was working. All of the participants had a chance to realize their ideas. In this time we were here Evs volunteers from 6 different countries, and for sure in the project were involved also a local volunteers from Kazanlak. Everybody from us had a different role in the creating process. Fortunately some volunteers were participants also on the first festival were part of the team so we had a good starting point. We had almost two months for preparing everything for the event. Some of us were responsible for making the commercial materials, some of us for making the program and some of us for arrange the things around the festival. Like always there were also some problems, but fortunately we found different solutions. Also Evs volunteers from other places were supporting the festival with propagation. In these times you could find posters or stickers almost in all big cities in Bulgaria. We were trying to involve as much people as it was possible, so we also went to the local schools to gather more participants.
Few weeks before the festival and after several team meetings, we started prepare the area for the event. The first task was marking the zones for the cleaning. It was impossible to clean the whole coast, so we decided to mark only the most frequented places, witch were close to the dam. We marked also the places for camping and we made the toilets.
The first day starts with the transportation of the people from Kazanlak to the lake. Some of people used the free bus, some of them were came by bikes, and there were some witch choose coming by walk or by hitchhiking. The briefing took a place next to the wall at 09:30, were all of the participants received the bags for collecting the garbage and the glows. It was nice to see that people from all ages came to participate on the event. The local people were helping to collect the full bags with the horse chariots. Thanks for one kayak club some of the participants was cleaning also the surface of the lake.
After the cleaning part everybody had a chance to try different kind of activities. For those who like sports, there was an opportunity to try the slack-line, kayaking and the kenus, foot bag, Frisbee, ball games, horse riding, for those who likes more the arts, it was possible to join the volunteers int he trash- art corner, and the sympatizants of music could join the groups of musicians playing around the camp. The trash-art corner was very interesting and also educational, becouse everybody had a chance to see how to make something from the garbage or recycle it. The main result of their activity was the raft, what they made from the collected plastic bottles. The weather during the day was pretty warm, but somtimes the ugly black clouds appeared. Unfortunately int he evening our biggest fear fullfiled and the rain came. According the bad weather we had to cancel some of the concerts. But still it was fun, people were enjoying the nice time and nobody cared about the weather. The atmosphere was awesome! The next morning was very sad for me, like it used to be always ont he festival, becouse the people were packing and slowly leaving the place. Even the end was not that best, we can say like a final conclusion, that the festival was succesful. The feedback was also good, so we can say very proudly that we made something unforgetable. After few months we were a bit dissapointed, becouse the conditions were the same like before the cleaning, but still we did something for the nature. We all hope that next year we will meet each other int he same place with the same goal.
