SuFuing in the city

4 SuFu Team members...
1 whole antenna working 24h...
A great team of participants...
The support of the Youth in Action program from the European Commission...
A big city to discover from a different point of view...


These are the ingredients for SuFu and the city, a seminar that at this very same moment is having place in Madrid. As we are more or less passing the equator of the week, we can say that it is doing very well. We spent the morning at the waste recycling plant of Valdemingomez; providing service for the whole city (4.5 million people), it is a small city on itself where all the packages and organic waste is prepared for being recycled. On previous days, IUCN speaker Russell Galt showed us the interactions between biodiversity and urban environment, and gave us the opportunity to provide ideas for the future evaluation system of urban biodiversity. We also could learn about citizen initiatives struggling with legislation to have the right to transform an empty space into a public open area for the neighbours, with vegetable garden, sport fields, and even an open air theater! And more and more activities that fill our mornings, afternoons and nights.

Here you can have some impressions from Filip, from AEGEE-Skopje, one of our participants:
"Great seminar, lots of interesting visits and speeches, and all of that in the wonderful city of Madrid. Love it !!". Anyway we will not stop working hard to make the second half even better, we are motivated to close the SuFu cycle with another successful project accomplished!

Now we have to leave you, here it is hard to find some free time :) Participants are now doing a Architecture Photo Rally...

Barcelona congress - networking, and more networking

So what did me and Miguel actually do in Barcelona besides breathing all the possible info connected to sustainable development?

Our big day was October 7th – this is when we had our knowledge cafe named „Sustaining our Future – shaping the role of youth in Europe“. It was 1,5 h long session in a big room (with around 10 similar sessions at the same time). It’s actually unbelievable, that we applied to hold this event more than a year ago – in July 2007. Finally we were there, and we could see that the effort had been worth it – all the interested people couldn’t fit behind the table and had to take extra chairs. Everyone was listening to us carefully and asking a lot of questions; not only about SuFu, but also generally about AEGEE – how we communicate in such a big organisation, what activities do we have, how do we get our new members etc. Also, of course, we were congratulated by the initiative of trying to tackle sustainable development. Young people are big interest for the nature conservation sector – that showed also from many other sessions that we attended. For example, International Institute for Sustainable Development was rather interested in cooperation with Youth NGO’s, especially in trainings, as they put big emphasis on empowering future sustainability leaders.

The congress organisers also made an effort to target youth especially: there was a specific section in the congress webpage, and also they arranged a nice gathering on a boat in Barcelona harbour. It was a nice opportunity to meet people who organised sessions for youth during the congress. It was quite charming to meet by the sea, under evening sun, sip some wine, eat chocolate and chat with people from World Business Council for Sustainable Development for example. This organisation was btw, one the biggest congress partners. Besides having big pavillion with a lot of information, and sevaral sessions on concrete topics, they also organised Business Night Schools, where business and nature conservation representatives could meet and learn how they can cooperate together. It was there where we had the chance to talk a bit with representatives of some quite known companies. Who knows, we just might become partners as well - you will hear more about it then ;)

Of course, I also had small meeting with the representative of Countdown 2010 initiative, with whom AEGEE is an official partner since June 2008 – it’s a global action to stop the loss of biodiversity. We had nice evening chat about concrete ways to cooperate – I can just say that future European Day of Environment organisers can be happy ;)

All in all, the congress was just a perfect place to connect ourselves into the world of sustainable development and make ourselves seen. If you are interested to know more, read our congress report and/or summary of the knowledge cafe or just contact me or Miguel by mail. And please leave a comment here on the blog to INTERACT!!!

SuFu in IUCN congress in Barcelona

From 5th to 9th of October, me and Miguel spent in 4th World Conservation Congress in Barcelona. The main organiser was IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature), who is also SuFu's partner. Just like IUCN is one of the oldest and most important conservation networks in the world, is the congress one of the most important gathering in nature conservation and sustainability issues. It is held in every 4 years and offers the place for people from NGOs, businesses, academia from all the continents to network, share ideas, build partnerships, learn new things, etc.
The event was simply huge! 5 days, 7800 participants, over 800 different events - how many agorae would that make :P? And the diversity among these participants, types of events, tackled topics was also huge. I had the chance for example to meet with people from Costa Rica, India, South Africa, Japan - and they were all very interested in AEGEE as well actually :P I attended sessions about urban biodiversity, business tools for ecosystem assessment, the state of world's languages, youth's role in building sustainable future etc.
More info what contacts we made for SuFu and AEGEE, will follow soon. But here's few pictures from the event, as appetiser :)