In the summer of 2023 OPEN MIND hosted 9 young people from France, Russia, Turkey and The Netherlands for 2 months. The name of the project is Ecology & Education for change. Community building .
The project involves several areas of focus
- Maintenance of city town composters with the main goal of establishing good practices both for the participants of the project and the local community.
- In the yard of the local museum we helped in the organisation of series of forgotten crafts. The name of the initiative is “A school of crafts” / “Школо по занаяти” and are part of the cultural calendar of the Shipka Community center. During the events we helped to establish a good organisation and maintained the space where the workshops were going on.
The community center as our partner is the core of the cultural life in the region. During planned restoration of the gallery room we helped with cleaning, painting, polishing and tiding up the space for future events. Like that we both supported the community center and learned all together how to do such manual work. - Another planned activity we had in 2023 was in a small village not far from Shipka. There we spend a whole week learning how to work with clay and build a house with natural materials. Yes it was dirty, but so much fun as well.
- One of the main activities during these 60 days in Shipka was permaculture design and gardening. Permaculture is what brings quality food in any garden. Its main principles include natural and regenerative gardening without any additional chemicals. The result is tasty and rich of nutritions food that cost minimum effort to be produced. During the project we took care of a permaculture garden and regenerative orchard in the fields. We learned the concept of zoning in permaculture and how diverse and unique nature can be. Also we were irrigating the fruit trees in the orchard every week in order to give them opportunity to grow and give fruits.
- Shipka Fest is an annual festival organised at the end of the project. It is the culmination of our project. The idea of the festival combines a bit of everything we did and shared here in Shipka. The festival has got rich cultural programme that includes craft workshops and lectionary in the day and concerts and cinema in the evening. It is important to say that the festival aims to be zero waste.
If you are between 18 to 30 years old, you might be eligible for our European Solicarity Corps volunteer program, taking place between July 16 to September 12, 2024.
In this year’s project we want you to experience to join the project and help us build one community rich of experiences and values, responsible for the environment and cultural life.
This is an international projects taking place in Shipka, Bulgaria. This is the second year of the project. Main topics are permaculture design, cultural heritage, sustainable living, community building.
