Poland, Poronin 2015 21st of April it was the day I joined project “Planet 1st! – Vol. 2”, it is the second part of great project, which gathered people who cares about environmental problems. Here came people from six different countries – Lithuania, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia and Italy. People had a clear mind that they don’t like what is happening with our Earth and understanding that we need to rise and start changing it. Everybody had great ideas which we shared during the project. Project supervisor Jerzy Szczepanczyk did his best to inspire us to share our minds in a lot of different ways – creativity workshops, discussions, brainstorming, etc. And of course he shared his knowledge about environment.
Every day was full of different practices. Each country presented environmental problems/situation in their countries, which I think was very useful, because it is always good to know different situations than you can learn from, sometimes it is possible to adapt it in your situation. It was very nice to see that in Lithuania the situation is not the worst when comparing with other countries. So we had not just what to learn from others, but also give good examples to others.
But not everything what we talked about was just related to environmental problems. We also made presentations about our countries, which was one of the most interesting parts, because for me it is nice to learn something new about other countries from local people. I was glad that we had opportunity to present Lithuania, it is such a nice country! We tried national foods, drinks, we danced national dances and sang songs, we exchanged your traditions and had a great time.
We went to Zakopane, city near Poronin where we visited Nature museum. We learned more about nature in Poland, plants and animals. Also on the last day of the project we went to Tatra mountains where we entered in to cave, the only cave with electricity inside. It was fantastic, because we had a chance to see in real what we were talking about in this project. It was reserve, so where else you can see better how people taking care/protecting nature. Really strict rules everywhere, 100% of nature protection. Do no litter or smoke, do not effect nature in any way we usually are doing even without thinking. Security is taking care of it and you can get a fine if you are not following the rules. As a result you can freely drink water from the river without being afraid that it is polluted.
I came to this project because I care, I care about the future and know that we must think about it and not to live only for this day. I am glad that here were people who are thinking and caring about it. It means that we can create a better tomorrow.