Bulgaria

BalkanKids Foundation takes part in a Youth Exchange project named CLIMATE CHANGE AS FAST AS FASHION. The group leaders are Antoaneta Pophlebarova and Ekaterina Dimitrova. The eight students who were chosen to be involved in the project are: Teodora Ilieva, Maria Stoyanova, Venecia Pavlova, Nikol Bozhinova, Stoyan Kolev, Venislav Trendafilov, Iva Gradinarova and Silviya Marinova.

Our first task was to prepare three logos for a competition. The students were divided into groups and shared their ideas in order to create the final products.

Then unfortunately we could experience the results from the climate change in our home town Varna. On 19.06 there were heavy rains. One of our neighbourhoods Asparuhovo was flooded. A lot of houses, blocks of flats and shops were damaged. Many cars were dragged into the sea. And the most tragic part- thirteen lives were lost. Our volunteers took part in the cleaning of the area.

Our next step was to focus on the climate change in Bulgaria. We took that decision because of the unusual amount of natural disasters this summer. There have been floods, hurricanes, hails and tornadoes. We organized a meeting about the pros and cons of the climate change in our country. The students were divided into two groups and they made a search in the Internet. The discussion led us to the conclusion that the cons outweigh the pros. Natural disasters have caused a lot of damages in the recent months. Many people lost not only their homes but also their means of living. The only positive side we thought of was that now we could grow some tropical plants here.

The next stage of our work was to create a poster with a clear message connected with the climate changes. We focused on Bulgaria again and tried to show how many towns and villages were affected by the disasters only in the last three months.

On 21.08 our group is going to participate in a seminar organized by Green Peace.

We are proud to be a part of this project and to try not only to be informed about the climate changes but also to actively participate in the attempts of overcoming the consequences of them.