Read about a project that came out of the Youth Future Conference 2013, a group of activists from Kosovo (or better: Kosova, as the local people named it) starting to raise awarness for environmental issues in a country where everyone justs plunks down their garbage in the streets.
What is it?
youthinkgreen Kosova is an NGO that works on projects concerning sustainable development and environmental awareness. It was founded by two teenagers from Prishtina, Kosovo, consisting a working group of ten people (so far).
What do we do?
We work on and organize projects, workshops and different events that have to deal with environmental awareness in Kosovo. Kosovo is one of the most polluted countries in Europe and the steps taken to improve that are very slow. Kosovo deals with different types of toxic pollutions which are as bad as for the environment, they endanger people’s health very seriously. Education and awareness of people for this 
issue is very small. Our main objective is to educate people of Kosovo on how to treat the environment better and healthier so that we can have a healthier life. Also we take actions and organize different protests, all of them addressing the Ministry of Environment and also the government of Kosovo so that they do more in this direction.
How do we do it?
We have different fields and areas on how we organize our work.
- Presentations: First of all many people in Kosovo are not aware with the problems that they are dealing or that they are going to deal with in the future because of the uncontrolled environment pollution. So we go to different schools and different institutions, to inform the people about the issues, consequences and the reforms that they can make to improve the situation.
- Workshops: We organize also different workshops, mostly with young people, where we can discuss and find different ways and solutions on stopping and improving the bizarre treatment of the environment here in Kosovo. Workshops include different researches, programs and different games and activities.
- Activities and actions: Our NGO also organizes activities and actions where the people of Kosovo can take part and be active. Different events like, cleaning your neighborhood and your city, environment day, earth day, etc. All of them with the idea of awareness building, stimulating and making people take action for a change. Also different protests are started from our NGO addressing the government, ministries and municipalities to do more on changing the policies that are polluting our environment, make greener decisions and cooperating with people in this direction. One good example of it is the “Tree of Hope “ that took place in Prishtina, in front of the government building.
Tree of hope
On December 5th, the international day of volunteering, we were introducing us to people with the action “tree of hope”. It is the international day of volunteering so we are introducing us to people with the action “tree of hope”. A couple of weeks ago we had the project week in our school. I suggested the school border that the week has to be the “week of sustainable development”. A lot of projects were done there with 250 pupils. We also have built the tree of hope with used material and garbage.
The tree of hope is an action that encourages people to write a wish or a demand in a papper leaf to our government about the environmental issues in Kosovo. Then the leaves are placed in the tree. This action is going to be in front of the government, like a protest. You may call it a peaceful protest. There are going to be presented the projects that were done in the project week. Also a lot of activities are going to take place there to draw attention to people. Then this tree, which is 2.5 meters big, is going to be sent by us to the Ministry of Environment here in Prishtina. The media is going to be there also. We are going to give away flyers for warning the people about the issues etc. Basically is going to be fun at the same time a protest. We have also spread leaves to children in different schools so they can write something in them and then take part on the action day.
Lots of things happen in the project at the moment, you’ll get an update soon!