August 28, there was a coordination meeting of partners from three countries - representatives of the public organization “Green Cross Belarus” (Belarus), the National Ecological Organization “Green Cross Ukraine” (Ukraine) and the Public Association «National Environmental Center» (Moldova).

The representatives of Green Cross Belarus, who will be directly involved in the project, and project coordinators from the partner countries, Yuri Sapega (Ukraine) and Yuliana Cantaragio (Moldova) were on the meeting.

At the beginning of the meeting, the project manager and director of Green Cross Belarus, Vladimir Shevtsov, presented the project, identifying its structure, goals, objectives and indicators. Vladimir Pustoshilo, the thematic coordinator of the project, outlined the features of school garden modeling, provided information about the existing gardens, shared the experience of their creation, spoke about errors and difficulties that arose in this work.

Then, Vladimir Shevtsov presented the logical-structural plan of the project, infographics of the project implementation. In an interactive form, project managers from Ukraine and Moldova received answers to numerous questions raised during the project presentation.

Lyudmila Skakun, a specialist of Green Cross Belarus, spoke about the reporting documentation for the School Garden project, the specifics of the procurement, the interaction structure. She also proposed to maintain a cloud administration system for the project.

August 29, there was a press conference with the participation of representatives of the Belarussian media. After the presentation of the organizers and partners of the project in Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova, Vladimir Shevtsov showed a video about the background of the international project “School Garden”; reviewed the situation in rural areas, the market for organic products in the project countries, spoke about the structure, goals, objectives, indicators and stages of the project. The project partners answered questions from the media about plans for its implementation.

During the coffee break, everyone could taste the organic products grown at the demonstration area of the educational center of Green Cross Belarus (raspberries of different varieties, mulberries, apples, plums), as well as honey obtained from a mini-apiary.

In the continuation of the press meeting, Vladimir Pustoshilo announced the regulations of the school garden competition, which is held in order to select 8 schools from three regions of Belarus in order to financially support the best school gardens.

After that, the guests toured the demonstration area of the educational center Green Cross Belarus. Here they were able to see how the methods and techniques of organic farming are implemented in practice. The guests visited the area of compost and biohumus production, greenhouses, training and experimental area of the garden with beds, boxes, the area on which the solar power plant is installed. Vladimir Pustoshilo spoke about the general concept of the demonstration area, showed a young garden with promising varieties of fruit trees, traditional and non-traditional berry crops, told how organic farming technologies are used in these areas, introduced the guests to a botanical collection of bio-vegetarians that impressed everyone with a variety of plant varieties and types of exotic plants.

Summing up the meeting and sharing the impressions, its participants noted that the idea of creating a network of business incubators on the basis of school gardens is a promising and absolutely doable task for those schools whose students and teachers are interested in maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

 

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This publication has been produced with the support of the European Union and the Green Cross International. Responsibility for the content of this publication lies with the public organization “Green Cross Belarus”, and it can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union and  Green Cross International.