After teachers have read the brochure “Let it always be…”, which was issued by Youth Environmental Network (also look here), an idea came to their minds – to hold an interesting environmental event for the students. And that idea was supported! On 13th of February under initiative of the teachers and school administration a seminar was held by the GEF SGP and activists of Youth Environmental Network (YEN Uz) in which 46 students of the school took part.

There were 5 teams which had to overcome several entertaining contests and learn many new things about the Environment. This seminar initiated a series of events which were planned to be held in that school during a month.
At the beginning Alexey Volkov, National Coordinator of the GEF SGP in Uzbekistan addressed the participants with the question about the nature and its protection.

After that, the participants were offered watching the film “Environment”, prepared by the request of the UNDP in Uzbekistan, where the subjects of inefficient use of water, climate change, management of hard domestic wastes and reduction of biodiversity were touched upon.
Then the participants were to play an interesting active quiz where the teams answered questions and could get points for this and proceed to the next step of the seminar. The questions were devoted to various environmental topics, and the guys could get most of the answers watching the movie.

The next step for the teams was a computer game “Honoloko Island” prepared by the European Environment Agency. This game proposed the children to live on a virtual island and do as little harm to the Environment and their health as possible. The winner of the game was the team that chose the solutions most favorable to the environment and human health.

After the game the participants were proposed to assemble a jigsaw puzzle and describe what environment issue was illustrated in that puzzle. The teams got points depending on the time the participants spent on fulfillment of the task, on the coverage of the issue and possible solutions. It should be mentioned that in this contest it was difficult to determine a winner as all teams showed their wide knowledge on the mentioned issues and their concern of the consequences. After finishing the discussion, the participants had a chance to think about what they could do for Environment protection and to express their proposals in a written form.

After successful finish of all steps the school children could enjoy watching environmental cartoons of World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Animal Planet and the creative group “Ekran” – “This is not about this”.
Finally, at the end of the event the results of the contest were summarized and the winner team was announced and got disks with the film “Environment”.

“We are very happy that you took such an active part in our today seminar, - with these words the initiators of the event, Alexey Volkov, Irina Gilfanova, Alina Ismailova, Alexandra Maleeva, Yuri Mun, addressed their final speech to the participants. - We hope to see you at our next meeting and hopefully, your friends and school mates would also join you in the next seminar”. In the end we would like to thank the teachers of the school from the bottom of our hearts for such wonderful children!
Irina Gilfanova, YEN Uz Information Unit