Recycling song: “We Will Recycle”

Here is a video from the latest teaching session, an environmental education song “We Will Recycle”!

Lyrics:

Buddy you´re a boy make a big trash

Playing in the street gonna be a big mess some day

You got trash on your streets

Big disgrace

Letting your trash all over the place

We will we will recycle

We will we will recycle

Buddy you´re a young man mean man

Trashing in the street gonna take on the world some day

Polluting your beach

Big disgrace

Spreading your waste all over the place

We will we will recycle

We will we will recycle

Buddy you´re a young man young girl

See it with your eyes gonna make a big trouble one day

Polluting your streets

Big disgrace

Somebody better put the trash in the right place

We will we will recycle

We will we will recycle

Another school visit done!

Another Worldwide Friends work camp related to Clean Up The Coastline worked for two weeks in Reykjavik for the environment! The work camp WF92: “Art and Environment” in addition to working in some local green areas visited a school to teach children again about the importance of environmental conservation.

This time the group made some modifications to the Program planned in the previous work camps. Previously the Powerpoint -show consisted mainly of the Icelandic child character Jón which was used how to demonstrate the pollution of Iceland and the possible effects it will have on people’s lives and animals and solution to the problem, the trash bin family “Trashis”. This time the work camp group updated the Powerpoint –presentation to include parts about air pollution, where the pollution comes from, saving energy and basic environmental sustainability. Moreover, the Trashi-part was updated to have the volunteers dressed up as the Trashi’s! This made the presentation more entertaining and to be able to catch the children’s attention better. After that we also played our old recycled Queen-song, “We Will Recycle”!

To finish we played again the funny recycling game which we had also in the previous school visits. In the game there is a big pile of miscellaneous trash in the middle of the room and five categories in which the children need to sort the trash. The categories are plastic, metal, paper, glass and batteries and the competing teams must as fast as possible sort the pile of trash into the right categories. The game ends when all the trash is in the boxes. The winners are the ones who gather the biggest amount and make the least mistakes. If the team makes a mistake that counts as a minus point, as well as leaving some trash outside the containers or breaking the glass objects.

Videos from the school visit coming up!

Teaching video from schools

Hey! Take a look at this video from our work camp WF82: “Environmental Exhibition in Reykjavik”, it shows us having our teaching session at Langholtskóli September 17th 2009. We used mostly the same session that was planned in our previous camp WF81 two beeks before.

Report on Garbage Art Exhibition 2009

The work camp arranging the exhibition spent two weeks making preparations for the exhibition, reaching its final on Friday 18th. Among other tasks, the team designed and created the poster, the hand-out flyer, some advertising signs and other small hand crafting tasks.

Work camp WF55: Green Army spread the exhibition posters around the city and the volunteers from the exhibition workcamp were promoting the display by spreading flyers on the streets, supported by a spectacular „sandwich sign“!  The exhibition was also published by Grapevine -magazine in their event list.

Because the group could unfortunately visit only one school the exhibition presented seven garbage art nominees, all build in Langholtskóla. However, besides the art the exhibition had also 62 pictures from our work camps and 20 pictures specifically related to the Clean up the Coastline –project.

The visitors had the possibility to vote for their favourite art and pictures with some impressive prizes. Our main sponsors were Brim, Arctic Rafting, Reykjavik Excursions and Mountaineers of Iceland and the main prizes were such luxuries as Glacier Adventure for 2, Super Jeep Tour, Rafting for 2 and a 10 000 kr gift card. Besides these we had over smaller prizes like free meals at restaurants and only the main prizes were worth more than 470 euros.

The winning art work was number 7. „Johanna Elin“. Congratulations to the creators! The prize for the winning class room is a free whale watching trip sponsored by Elding!

The staff from the BSI Station and Reykjavik Excursions seemed to be pleased to have something happening on the BSI station and we were satisfied with the location of the display.  With this location we felt like we could reach many people who otherwise would have not found our event.

Thank you for all the visitors and for those who wrote to our guestbook!

Lots of pictures from the exhibition added to our Picasa Gallery. Take a look over here!

Iceland – On The Move! -video

Hello friends! Check out this video about the first part of Iceland – On The Move! It gives you a nice idea of what our workcamp was all about.

Also check out our other videos in our YouTube -profile.

Garbage Art Exhibition in Reykjavik

This year WF Veraldarvinir arranges again its annual Environmental Garbage Art Exhibition!

More specifically, our work camp WF82: “Environmental Exhibition in Reykjavik” has been working hard to arrange the exhibition at the BSI Station in Reykjavik. The volunteers spent a lot of effort designing posters, signs and flyers for the display and to promote our exhibition in the streets.  The group also visited six class rooms in Langholtskóli and helped the children build art out of the garbage we had brought.

Besides actualizing everything else the volunteers did a terrific job gathering sponsorships to be the prizes for our competition. The results were more than we expected: We got almost 20 sponsors and our main sponsors are Reykjavik Excursions, Artic Rafting, Brim and Mountaineers of Iceland. Only the three biggest prizes are altogether worth more than 470 Euros!!

The exhibition will be open 18th – 25th of September and it includes:

- Garbage Art made by children from Langholtskóli -school

- Photo display of Worldwide Friends work camps from summer 2009

- Photo display of the Clean Up The Coastline -project

- Info sheets about our organization

- Video displays from our organization

- Competition to vote for your favorite art and pictures with great prizes!

The lottery will be take place on the final day of the exhibition at 25th of September. The winners of the competition will be contacted personally.

If you happen to be in Reykjavik you are welcome to visit our exhibition!

A full report about our exhibition project coming up later.

Results from 2nd part of On The Move!

The second part of On The Move -camp took place 19.8. – 2.9.2009. The work camp concentrated more on the area North from Reykjavik, covering at first the area below Reykjavik and then proceeding to the North. The team managed to scan almost the whole Western Fjords expect some areas which were unreachable by car, like the nature reserve area of Hornstrandir.  This time the team found much more big ship wrecks and managed to scan the coastline more thoroughly.

The results are now online! Check out the updated On The Move -map below!

View Larger Map

Environmental Education in Reykjavik!

This year again WF Veraldarvinir had a work camp about teaching children of Reykjavik about environmental issues. The work camp visited three schools in Reykjavik teaching 12 different classes of children from the age of 10 to 12 years.

The group prepared a session with four parts, first introducing themselves in Icelandic and teaching kids about pollution and recycling in Iceland using a power point presentation with an Icelandic child character Jón. After that the group had a musical performance with drums and shakers made of garbage. The volunteers played a crazy version of Queen‘s classic song „We Will Rock You“, lyrics modified to fit the theme better as „We Will Recycle“!

After this the group went to class rooms with the children and had an illustration of the nature of Iceland and what garbage can cause to it using a map on the floor. Finally the group played a recycling game with the kids and what a crazy chaos exploded when the children started to play!

The work camp in general was great fun and the volunteers had a really good time. The project in overall got a good response from the schools and from the teachers and we are sure to do it again in the future.

About OSPAR

WF Veraldarvinir uses in its beach litter surveys an official scientific methodology provided by OSPAR. Here’s a little bit of information about what OSPAR actually is.

OSPAR is the mechanism by which fifteen Governments of the western coasts and catchments of Europe, together with the European Community, cooperate to protect the marine environment of the North-East Atlantic.

The Governments are Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom.

Using the OSPAR litter survey methodology we mark a 100m x 50m area from the coastline, collect all the litter from the area, weight and categorize them and mark them in a standard form to create some statistical scientific data.

For more information visit their website at http://www.ospar.org.

Research project: Clean Up The Coastline in the Western Fjords

In the beginning of August WF Veraldarvinir conducted a two week work camp in the Western Fjords of Iceland. The aim of the work camp was to clean up coastlines of some beaches and above all execute beach litter surveys  with the official research methodology provided by OSPAR.

An international group of eight volunteers and two work camp leaders were chosen for the camp. The spirit of the group was unbelievable;  we felt like a family and when people saw us they were amazed that we did not know each other before the camp.

The group cleaned six parts of different coastlines on the fjords and conducted several beach litter surveys on every coastline. We were amazed to notice that the beaches were surprisingly clean; there was not too much garbage to clean up. The results for the litter surveys will be added later, but meanwhile check out our CUC-map to see the areas we cleaned!

A big thanks goes to Danielle Stollak from the University of Iceland and the local community of Núpur! Your contribution was great and highly appreciated!