Gaia Educates Future Environmentalists

by Natalya Kumysh & photos courtesy of Gaia

Gaia, a children's environmental association in Sevastopol, started activities ten years ago, and over the years has gone through many stages of development and increasing activity. At first it was an ecotourism club called Irbis. The club organized field trips for students and young people, staged nature-preservation events to clean up tourist facilities, gathered nuts and wild plants; and patrolled the forest during fire season. Later, as we became more experienced, we began to study nature for the purpose of determining how human beings influence the environment. The Environmental Protection Committee and research organizations began giving us special assignments related to this, and the idea arose to create an environmental institute at the Sevastopol school that most of our active club members had attended. We concluded an agreement with the Department of Industrial Ecology at Sevastopol Technical University and began to train "environmental cadres."

We set up study groups among students in the 9th-11th grades, and introduced a course called "Fundamentals of Environmental Knowledge." In 1990 the students were already taking their first final oral exams on ecology, attended not only by the exam-givers but also by officials from the State Nature Committee, scientists and representatives of the public and the press.

We also organized many environmental field exercises and expeditions, winning numerous Ukrainian national competitons for environmental expeditions. Our young people participated in scientific conferences of varying levels, and in February 1994, we organized a Crimean scientific conference called Ecologia 94, at which students at our institute presented and defended their research projects before scientists and the public.

Since 1990 we have worked actively with Greenpeace on a number of projects, including collecting signatures to petition against nuclear testing by France and other countries. Other activities have included publishing a handbook for ecotourists, setting up an environmental library, and performing an environmental street theater work during the tenth anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.

When our environmental institute graduated its first class in 1994, we did not want to part with those young people who had devoted so many years to environmental learning and who had elected to study in a special environmental institution. As a result, we created the NGO Gaia.

As we selected priorities for our activities, we at first chose familiar activities, such as environmental education and training, research work and nature preservation. As we progressed, however, we took on new programs, such as organizing and conducting environmental camps; helping to protect parks; and holding lectures, conferences, seminars and public video presentations on the environment. Working with Lesokhoz, the local forest management body, we clean up fire damage in protected forest territories that are otherwise inaccessible to the public. In addition to clearing dead material away, after a sufficient period of time has passed, we plant new vegetation in areas destroyed by the fire

Support from ISAR, the Sacred Earth Network (SEN), and the Vidrodzhennya Foundation has allowed us to purchase a copier, laser printer, video equipment, and set up e-mail, greatly facilitating our organization's work. We are now able to quickly exchange information with other NGOs, keep abreast of the latest news in Ukraine and abroad, and publish booklets and flyers on environmental themes for distribution to the public in Sevastopol. Recently the local press and television have covered several of our events.

Our ability to communicate with other organizations and to work with government structures has produced an endless supply of ideas and enthusiasm for our work. More and more new people are coming to us with offers for joint projects. The idea to create an environmental community on the historically sacred grounds of the Feolent area arose in this way. The local Committee for Environmental Safety is giving us land in the area, where, along with research, we will also perform nature preservation work.

Natalya Kumysh is head of Gaia. Translated by Andrew Reese.

Gaia, a/ya 28, Sevastopol 335006,Ukraine; phone: (0692) 42-64-96; e-mail: root@gaia.sebastopol.ua.