BLOG DIARY - GYMNASIUM OF PERECHYN

2 more schools

Hallo liebe freunde:)

Last week we celebrated the European Day! Our ecological team together with euro club that we have in our small town decided to spand that day in Geographical Center of Europe. We drew through all Transkarpathia to get there and we had awesome time!

More about what we saw and what we did you can see on YouTube. Here is a link for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=eHHIKBCrKLI

Here is one more article about us. This time on Internet

http://www.ci-center.org /

Hey guys!

here are some more videos from our hiking tour:



http://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=BXpxCfODD4s

http://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=iFkbg-xgnYM

http://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=V6OYWvNeQEQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=xz2lC59DOnM

Hope you'll have fun watching them!

                                                           Have a nice day!
               
                                                              eco-ambassadors

Hello!

We do have some awesome news! The head of our project, Alysa Smyrna, was invited on television and she was talking about our ecological project and explaining the meaning of ecological footprint. So basically now more and a lot more people know about us and about ecological footprint that we all make by living on our earth.

Our teacher also reacently came back from Germany, Dortmund, were she presented on international conference the presentation we have been working with during our trainings! As far as we know, she did a good job and we all happy to have her back!

                                                         We'll keep in touch!
                                                             Lots of smiles:)
                                                                 Eco-ambassadors...

Here are videos from our excursion. Please watch them! They are hilarious!

http://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=V6OYWvNeQEQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=iFkbg-xgnYM

http://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=xz2lC59DOnM

http://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=lx3cWAywh8w

Hi everybody!

The Eco-ambassadors have interesting information for all of you. The head of our project, Ally, teaches ecoological tourism at Uzhgorod's Nation University.  And, as you know, we had a training there recently. All of the students there listened carefully and two weeks after our training they had a test which included questions like, ''What do people need to do to change our ecological situation?'' and the students answered with information they learned from our presentation!  

Today, we also had two trainings in villages near our town. It was great! Knowing that we increased the number of informed about the ecological footprint of teenagers, makes us happy!

P.S. HAPPY EASTER!!!

On Saturday April 11th our eco-ambassadors went hiking and lay down an ecological path in cooperation with Uzhgorod's National University!

We went to Antalovskya Polyana. It is beautiful glade, where we found a lot of snowdrops (type of flower) and saw the ruins of a castle on our way.  We even chanced to find snow (at this time of the year) and mountain springs!

Our team met early in the morning at the bus station. During our way, we tourists greeted the awesome hills where we made pictures. Our hiking tour took 12 hours and all-in-all was about 25 miles. It was a hard hike, first of all because of the high hills and second becasue it rained most of the day. That was a problem of ours - getting wet, but it didn't matter because we were all together and we were happy.

At the end of our hiking tour we were very tired and exhausted, but now, when we look at pictures, we took we are thinking of doing it again!

Hello!

Here are few links with some more videos and pictures from our trainings and our presentation, which we have translated from English into Ukrainian):

http://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=wOdDQ2i5DBE
http://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=AgFL8XDzCoI

We also started networking with Uzhgorod's National University and on Saturday, April 11th we are going to go hiking and lay down an ecological path. So, see here for more pictures and videos!!!

Right now we are working on making some stripes with which we can mark our path and others things we need for our trip!

But, more about that later!                

Have a nice day!

Hey hey!

You might think it's strange.......but here in Ukraine it's not very common to recycle trash and a few days ago we decided to invent this tradition in our school! We put a container for paper and plastic and so far it seems to work!

Our ecological team also has been cleaning around the school and in our town to show others how fast we, all together, can change our environment and live in better world with better ecology!

                                                                Bye-bye =]

Hello there!

We are more than happy to announce that our team can now officially be called "ECOLOGICAL AMBASSADORS." Would you like to know why? Because today was our 6th training and guess what?  It was at Uzhgorod National University!

We gave our presentation to students in their 3rd year in the university, so basically it was with 19-year old youth! We also had a few professors present during our training!

What really surprised us all was how carefully everyone listened to us and how excited they were about all our games and contests after presentation.

It was one of our most important training events and we all did really well! We came home with great memories and an awesome experience and left the college students in a great mood.

Both professors and students were really grateful.  One of professors even invited us to go to the mountains for a tour.  At this time, we will make our ecological path in mountains for tourists and others.  But, we will tell you more about that later!

Needless to say, after this, we are not afraid of anything! And, for sure more than ready for our next training!

Lots of smiles))))))
The Eco-Ambassadors

Hello everyone!

You would probably like to know how our training is going.  We hope you were able to watch our videos on YouTube!

So our last training tour was fantastic! There were three schools on our schedule and each one of them nearly 35kilometers away from our town; that's almost an hour of driving!

What was also really amazing was that it is almost Spring in Perechyn and 30 kilometers from our town we still had a lot of snow! So, we called these training visits our "trip to the snow wonderland!"

In every school children were really pleased to have us; in the third school, they even prepared a concert for us about the environment, which was whole lot of fun! We all came home really tired, but excited!!!

We still have a lot to do and a lot of schools to go to! So, we will keep in touch and let you know how everything is going!

Take care,
The Eco-Ambassadors

Here are some videos from our tour

http://www.youtube.com/results ?search_type=&search_query=4livingplanet&aq=f

and some pictures of the first training in our gymnasium (high school).

And.... this weekend there were two articles about us, The Ecological Ambassadors, in both regional newspapers.  We have become famous!  :))))

Hello everyone!

Today we started our circuit and have already completed training for two schools in our region: Novoselytsja and Dubrunuchi.

In Novoselytsja, students were really excited to see us and listen top our information about the ecological footprint.  We had a lot of fun with them and it was a great experience for us!

However, in the second town we couldn't finish our training because the children weren't concentrating and didn't seem to understand the ecological situation at all. We were really upset about that.  But, because of this we were able to compare attitudes and behaviors among schools and people.

We have a really busy schedule! Next week we have three schools to visit and they all pretty far from our town.

We will keep in touch and let you know how everything is going!

Lots of smiles:)
The Eco-Ambassadors

Hello again...

This weeked we were very surprised to see an article in the regional newspaper about our activities written by our partner organization the "Center for Community Initiatives".

The following meeting, we completely dedicated to "situation and concurence analysis" which means we all read through all the projects from other schools participating in this For a Living Planet project and compared our Ecological Footprint project with others.  It made us feel part of something much bigger to see that we are all making a difference for our planet!

Have a nice day!

P.S. Pictures coming soon!

Hello!

Everyone who would like to see the video we made with all the interviews we conducted in our community about what people know about the concept of an "ecological footprint," may now go to the Downloads section of the blog under "Gymnasium of Perechyn."

The whole world celebrated St. Valentine's day on February 14th, incluidng the Eco-Ambassadors.  We organized a very nice party in our gymnasium and we all had fun and wrote valentine cards for each other.

PEOPLE, WE LOVE YOU!

Hello dear friends!

We are finally ready to start our trainings!

We will do our first training on Monday in our gymnasium (high school). Fifteen schools from our region and our National University in Uzhgorod invited us to present our program.

During these events, participants will have a chance to measure their own ecological footprint!

Oh - and FINALLY THE T-SHIRTS WITH OUR LOGO ARE READY!!!

Hello everybody!

Today we finished working on our presentation and we also made two posters for our trainings. Every representer of our group tried presenting their part of the presentation. And, we did a great job!

Finally, today everyone learned how to write in the blog, which is really exciting!

We also tried to download our video, but unfortunately the internet is too slow, so we couldn`t do it! But, we will try to post it as soon as possible!

Best wishes from Zakarpattia!  

Today, we are preparing our video by taking clips from our interviews which we did last week with people in our town.  Soon, you will be able to see it on our blog (in about a week)!

Yesterday and today, we also prepared our decorative clay footprints, which we will hang on the walls of schools throughout the region to remind them about our environmental footprint.  We all put our feet in clay, allowed this to dry for a day, and then painted them.  

We also are still working our presentation (we are perfectionists!).  

We also added two new members to our group today and they are presently taking the online test to determine their ecological footprints!

Keep on trekking!
Julia, Sveta & Monica
Eco-Ambassadors

Hello all!

Our second round of interviews were more productive.  We interviewed many different people from different backgrounds, ages, professions, educational levels, and more.  Our goal was to find out what people know about the ecological footprint.

As a result of our interviews, we see a distinction between the knowledge of younger and older people.  Older people know more than younger about the ecological footprint, however they also don't really do much to protect and help the environment.  

After discussing the information, we decided to use it to design a round of trainings to educate younger people. We hope by educating  younger people, they may influence the young and old about how to  help save our planet.

Thanks!
Tanya
Eco-Ambassador

We met again yesterday to work on our presentation and this time we had a few other students come too.  We are happy that more youth want to get involved in our work, especially when they could be taking their holiday break!  

But, when we all get together - there is a lot of energy in the room and we all agree that we like to exchange ideas and talk about the best way to talk about our footprint so that people will here.  We are getting closer!

The Eco-Ambassadors

Greetings!

It is Christmas in Ukraine, a day to reflect on things most important to us - family, friends, and for all of us - our earth!  We met today to discuss next steps for our project.    

Three of us took our cameras to the street and recorded answers as we asked five people to define for us "ecological footprint".  Only one of them was able to answer, so we know we are on the right path to building our training presentation.  

Then, we each took the online test to determine our own individual ecological footprint and each of us was surprised by the results.  We decided to take the average from among all of us and use it as part of our presentation as well as in the creation of our multi-dimensional artwork, which we will  present to each of the schools to place on the wall as a reminder to always think about how we can reduce our footprint.  

After this, we reviewed our plan and the next steps for our project, including:

• Finishing the presentation and practicing it with our group;

   

• Creating our multi-dimensional footprint artwork;

• Recruiting additional members to help us expand our activities; and

• Determining the agenda for our next meeting and whom from among us will facilitate it.

We also discussed things like how difficult it is for us to work in teams and how to facilitate events and meetings, since here in Ukraine these are sometimes new and difficult concepts for us.  As a result, we decided that each of us will practice creating an agenda and leading our future meetings.  This way, we will be prepared for the Spring when we will coordinate larger events in our community.  

Step-by-step, our footprint(s) growing smaller,
The Eco-Ambassadors

Dear all,

We have not disappeared. I had to leave my kids for 2 weeks to travel to Germany. I have been dealing with the Darmstadt government about the practica for my tourism students.

During my absence, my Little Germans searched for information to finish writing a presentation they will make to each of our schools; they have made the most of the information.

Our art teacher is helping us create a multi-dimensional representation of our local ecological footprint.  We will present this artwork to each of the schools as an ongoing reminder to always consider their contribution to our earth.

We are still working on the translating of the power point presentation by Pekny. It will be our main spring to this theme.

This week we started work on the outside part of our ecological project by hiking in the woods far above Perechyn to a place known as the "holed stone".  

We hiked with our geography teacher, assessing the many social paths that have been created along the trail and marking the way to help us prepare for our work in the Spring when we will restore the original trail, take measures to discourage the use of off-shooting paths,  create signs and applications to encourage people to remain on the marked path, thereby protecting our natural flora and fauna.

Our next step is to gather information about the "holed stone" and make two informational tourist maps.  Our partner from the national park service has promised to help us.  

We are also working to research and translate material we will use in an educational presentation we are designing to educate our community about the ecological footprint.

Hi everybody,

We have already had our first two sessions and they were very successful. The project concept is ready and the Eco-Ambassadors' logo has been created (see above)!  

Best wishes,

Little Germans from Perechyn