Not all NGOs cooperating with foreigners have hard times in Russia. Last week, nearly a hundred members of several youth environmental organizations met in Arkhangelsk with the goal to develop cooperation across the borders.
“Existence of independent youth ecological organizations in Northwest-Russia is of key importance to our cooperation,” says Dagny Hovind with Nature and Youth in Norway.
“We learned a lot by listening to the members of the Russian organizations. The discussions were both interesting and highly enlightening for all Norwegian participants,” she says.
In Arkhangelsk, the meetings were organized by AETAS. Also members from the Murmansk-based Priroda i Molodezh (PiM) participated in the forum that lasted for three days.
The lectures ranged from development and knowledge of sustainable energy sources like windpower and solar energy, to forestry and climate change and international climate negotiations. After each lecture the participants had workshops where they had to come up with ideas for concrete measures to be taken in the Barents region within the different themes. The ideas ranged from measures to bring information to the public, arranging of actions and other events to the creation of sustainable energy sources.
Nature and Youth’s Russia Project has been going on since the late Soviet period in 1990 and is one of the longest lasting cross-border cooperation between NGOs in the Barents Region. The cooperation first started between Norway and Murmansk region, but was expanded to the Arkhangelsk region in the late 1990s.
