Deadline: 1 April 2013
Open to: Organizations that work with youth, non-formal education, ecology, sustainability and permaculture, care about the nature and preserving rural areas and villages
Venue: Village Temska, Pirot, Balkan mountains, Serbia from 13-24 July 2013
Description
If you are organization that works with youth, non-formal education, ecology, sustainability and permaculture, care about the nature and preserving rural areas and villages, please contact NGO “Pirot e Publika” and become a partner. The concept of this camp is not to invite participants to apply via open call. They want to find partner organization from every interested country so participants can apply to them.
What do partners need to do?
- Complete an application for partnership (contact organizers at kamptemska@gmail.com)
- Promote Work Camp “Stara planina”
- Find two participants from their country via open call for participants. They are looking for participants from rural areas, interested in helping them to find a way to save village Temska from vanishing, but also interested in ecology, nature, non-formal education. Participants should send CV, Motivation letter and a short essay of their way to prevent mountain villages from dying to partner organization and that would be criteria for choosing participants.
- Helping participants in every way – to get to the venue, to contact us, as organizers if anything unexpected happens. Also, there is a participation fee of 5 Euros per day, so 50 Euros per whole camp. If partner organization is capable of helping them with paying participation fee or travel costs (or part of it), that would be great.
- Partner organization should send organizers, with participants, their country flag, flag of their organization as well as the short presentation about their country so they can post their flag and participants can present your country/organization.
- Partner organization should send their logo and website so they can promote them as partners.
For any additional information, mail them at kamptemska@gmail.com.
History and Details about the camp
Camp “Stara planina” was established in 2008 by student organizations at the Faculty of Sciences in Novi Sad, Belgrade, Nis, Kragujevac and villagers from village Temska as a kind of rebellion against the destruction of the mountain, in order to preserve it.
In the beginning it was a science and research camp for students of Science, Biology and Ecology, but, as the camp grew, the number of participants from year to year increased, so it became a international volunteer camp also. Thanks to the involvement of individuals, led by Marko Sciban, from the third year of camp volunteers from abroad started to come.
From 2012, organizations from Pirot took the responsibility to organize camp, led by the NGO “Pirot E Publika”, NGO “Temska” and Youth Office of Pirot, in order to maintain the camp and further improve it. During those 5 years the camp has become the largest of its kind in Serbia and beyond. Each year over 200 participants are part of the camp, both from from Serbia and abroad. Moreover, last year’s camp was intercontinental, because they had participants from Africa, and South America, in addition to the standard participation of Europeans.
Basically, they had two Work Camps. One is for biologists, ecologists, geographers from Serbia, and second one is for participants from all over the world. But they are all at the same venue, so there are no strict restrictions from joining certain activity. The venue is in Serbia’s Municipality of Pirot, Temska village (15km from Pirot, at the gate of the Stara Planina) from 13 July to 24 July 2013.
Accommodation is in Temska village. Participants will be housed in a local school, but also in tents (if desired). They need to bring a sleeping bag and/or tent, and organizers provides a mattress to place under the sleeping bag. The school has both male and female shower rooms.
For more information, please see their official website HERE.
