1.2. Improving the capacity for nature protection, sustainable use and management of common natural resources through cooperation initiatives in the cross-border area

The project aims at enhancement of nature protection cooperation initiatives in the cross-border area throuth promotion of separate waste collection and increasing the public awareness in environmental protection.

Within the project training of municipal workers for seperate collection of green waste will be organized in Aytos, a two-day workshop will be held in Edirne with the participation of both partners and an awaraness compaign will be held in Edirne province. The Final forum and event "Let's clean our town together" will be organized in Aytos.

Implementation of joint measures for nature protection are envisaged in the cross-border region. Delivery of equipment for seperate waste collection in province of Edirne and in Aytos will be made for the purposes of the project. Municipal staff will be trainied for operating the equipment.

As result of the implemented training activities and supplied specialized equipment, the capacity and awareness in both municipalities for waste collection and environmental protection will be improved.

Project status: Finished

The project partners have implemented the activities according to the schedule.

The project ‘‘United Cross Border Initiatives for Protection of Environment of the Bulgaria - Turkey Area’’ have gathered the people from Turkey and Bulgaria to combine their forces on protection of the environment, nature and increase their people awareness on the issue in the cross-border area.

Many institutions, people and the partners of the project have worked in cooperation to reach the aims of the project and for this reason many events, meetings, press conferences, and an awareness campaign have been organized during the project.

Firstly, both partners have started to work purchasing their equipment. Edirne has purchased 706 recycling bins and Aytos has purchased equipment to collect the green waste separately within the scope of the project. After the purchasing process was completed green waste and garbage have been started to be collected separately, we have reached to villages for protecting of the environment and give better service. Thus, pollution has been reduced, clean living space has been provided, harms of waste on nature have been minimized and garbage have been started to be collected separately for recycling. But, these all were not enough at the protection of the environment. We should have attached to institutions, experts on environmental issues and public in order to make it permanent, develop our project and spread the importance of the protection of the environment; and we did. Because of these reasons, a workshop in Edirne and a final forum in Aytos were organized. The participants who are representatives of regional and local authorities, organizations and structures related to environment at local level from Turkey and Bulgaria made presentations and shared their best-practice at the meetings. We have got the different ideas on what we could do protection of our nature with these presentations. On the other hand, participants together had brainstorm and discussed on environmental problems in the cross-border area. When the discussion session was done they published a declaration and took some decisions such as developing new projects together to submit the grant schemes and taking joint action on environmental issues. Meetings have reached to its goal because the partners of the project created a new project, decided to take a joint action for next steps and new friendships were made between 2 countries at these meetings. And also all information about project events have been published on social media account of project and shared the local press to inform the public. 

After the meetings, ‘Let’s clean together our town’ event was organized in Aytos to make the public a partner of our project and improve it. 12 participants from Turkey; volunteers, citizens and students from Bulgaria together collected the garbage and cleaned the environment. Even if it was a symbolic event, all participants have been encouraged to clean the environment; have worked together to achieve the same goal and were happy together(!) to accomplish it. 2 countries have taken an action for protection of the environment by working together and thus the borders have been removed between us. Also, we have planted a hope for the future by involving the children to the project by this event.

And finally, we organized an awareness campaign in 8 town and center of Edirne to spread our project to the public. Trainings of the project on importance of recycling and environmental problems were given by the experts. 260 participants have attended the trainings and many of them were reeves, teachers.  Therefore we have taken an opportunity in order to reach the public of villages and students and by this means we have reached the villagers and students through reeves and teachers why they should use the recycling bins and why they protect the environment. Additionally, brochures and leaflets of project were delivered to the cafes of villages and at the village schools and the campaign have reached to much population by this means. With the campaign, citizen’s awareness on protection of environment has been raised and trainings have been interactive programme for experts and participants at the same time. Their other problems on environmental problems have listened and much valuable ideas have been got to create the new projects.

Thereby, we have touched the many people on environmental problems in the cross-border area to be able to solve it. Our small steps have turned into the great happiness at the end of the project. And a hope has been planted to the hearts of people by our project to grow.

Social Media:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/CB005.1.12.087

Facebook: www.facebook.com/ipaedirnecb005.1.12.087    

Project materials:

Project promotional materials (folder and information board) are available HERE.

Project Leaflet (in Bulgarian and Turkish) is available HERE.

Project products:

The Project brochure is available HERE.

The presentations from the events held under the project are available HERE.