Summarizing the season

This will probably be one of the final posts for 2009 so I thought I’d present you a summary of everything we did this season related to Clean Up The Coastline –project.

6.7-18.7 Iceland – On The Move! part 1

A pilot project for Worldwide Friends. A small group of volunteers was sent to drive along the coastline of Iceland to discover and mark to their map all the trash objects that were too heavy to be removed by hand. These trash objects could be for example ship wrecks or fishing nets buried in the sand. The group covered the coastline from west of the village Vik proceeding to the East, rising to the North and getting all the way to Akureyri.

03.8-17.8 Research project: Clean up the Coastline in the Western Fjords

A volunteer group went to the Western Fjords for two weeks to clean up the beaches and to execute beach pollution surveys. The group was using the official European research methodology provided by OSPAR. The group cleaned six parts of different coastlines on the fjords and conducted several beach litter surveys on every coastline.

19.8. – 2.9. Iceland – On The Move! part 2

Second part of the adventure along the coastline of Iceland, this time discovering the area from south of Reykjavik after Vik, proceeding to the North of Reykjavik covering almost the whole Western Fjords. The results of both On The Move –camps we marked to a Google Map and are found here.

24.8.-4.9. Environmental Education in Reykjavik

A large group of 17 volunteers planned a one hour school visit. The aim was to teach children about environmental issues and recycling. The group used some information from the previous year to plan, but basically the whole session was planned from scratch.

The session had a Powerpoint –presentation about a Icelandic child character Jón and “Trashi”, a cartoon character of a talking trash bin. After this the group had a music performance of Queen’s song “We will rock you” played with trash instruments, transformed into “We will recycle” to fit the theme better. After the music the group split into classrooms and made an illustration about the nature of Iceland and garbage using a large map on the floor. Finally the group played a recycling game with the children. After careful planning the group visited three schools to teach their session to 12 classrooms.

18.-25.9. Environmental Exhibition in Reykjavik

The work camp planned the environmental “Garbage Art Exhibition” at the BSI station of Reykjavik, which included photography from the summer 2009 work camps, info sheets about Worldwide Friends and garbage art build by kids at elementary schools from Reykjavik. Moreover, the group did a school visit and teached the kids using the Powerpoint –show from the previous work camp and build garbage art work with the children for the exhibition.

27.10.-10.11. Art and Environment

A group was working for local green areas of Reykjavik city and did also a school visit. The group worked to update the Powerpoint –presentation to a new version, which included this time information about energy saving and air pollution and also a funny acting part. Therefore the visit was this time more informative and entertaining.

This concludes the season 2009 for Clean Up The Coastline. We are already planning the activities for next year, some of them are going to be similar as the ones, so stay tuned and check out our page in the future as well!

Have a nice rest of the year 2009!

~ Tomi Tuovinen, Clean Up The Coastline –coordinator 2009

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.