BOKOR/Ecogroup of activities 1992-93The Ecogroup met every 4 weeks in the 1992-93 school year (Sept. 21 to
May 17) during the week of Bokor information exchange on Monday afternoons.
Pista Farkas arranged the place and good mood. The following were
accomplished:
1) Nursery school: Several of us reached substantial results in the
area of environmental education in nursery schools. Ildikó Szõke
wrote her thesis on this topic this year.
2) Primary school: Five of us work in different schools, and we help
each other in planning and organizing environmental education, clubs
and actions. We participated in the program measuring air pollution in
Europe. We planted trees and made our immediate environment more beautiful.
We've been collecting dead batteries in our schools for years, and we
made sure they got it to the waste facility in Aszód (the only
hazardous waste depository in Hungary). We've promoted recycled paper
and gray notebooks everywhere. In many cases we were successful at the
workplaces of non-teacher members as well.
3) Ecocamp: There were three camps this past summer, organized by
Bence Botlik. We also sent the addresses of interested teachers to
other ecocamps, thereby 63 guest teachers and about 200 students
participated in a total of 43 camps.
4) Articles, presentations: We regularly wrote articles for Bokor
publications. Of course more of us could do more. Some of our members
published articles local papers and were invited to give (smaller)
presentations.
5) Protecting the local environment: In this area the Pécel members
achieved the most visible results: they got their whole community involved.
We organized similar clean-up, keep-your-neighborhood beautiful activities
in Szentendre and the II. and XIV. districts of Budapest.
6) Anti-ad activities: We are protecting ourselves against the consumption
mentality which is growing in an uncontrolled way, and its prophet, the
television. We try to conserve energy, water, and to decrease the amount
the meat we eat. Pista Gyarmathy in Debrecen, as well as others, have
begun to fight back against the illegal (yet existing) cigarette
advertisements.
7) Earth Day: We celebrate Earth Day with activities and events in school.
The Pécel group arranged selective waste collection and presentations.
Our Alba Kör (anti-military service group) members used peaceful methods
to protest: they painted a white line on the sidewalk to indicate the
place on the sidewalk where cars shouldn't park so trollers, handicapped
and the blind can move unimpaired. Since then car drivers have respected
this line.
8) GAIA newsdigest: Thanks to Lajos György and his 80 colleagues we
have been receiving green news for years now. Bokor participates in
collecting and summarizing articles for this publication. We've
spread GAIA numbers since 1990 via floppy discs.
9) Green Spider activity: With the laptop we received from the Autonómia
Foundation we were among the first to hook in to the Green Spider
computer network. We contribute to the news, giving up-to-date
information in the local column. The laptop is used for
writing articles, and the members can borrow it for conferences.
10) Database on environmental schools: We've collected the addresses,
information about schools interested in environmental education,
including 3500 environmental teacher's addresses, their subjects,
language ability, etc. This database can be used for spreading
leaflets and organizing conferences by NGOs. Since we covered the
costs of the data entry, the database is the intellectual property
of the BOKOR/Ecogroup, and we ensure that the whole environmental
movement has access to it.