Idea of the project

Bulgaria is an exceptionally beautiful country with rich and diverse nature. Traveling around the world, we have never seen anything like the flora and fauna in Bulgaria. That’s why we decided to try and make popular these unique national resources. Moreover in this initiative we saw an opportunity to give chance to a lot of young people to gain precious knowledge for nature, through their own experience. We believed that getting to know nature better would help young people appreciate its importance.

Before long, our future partners, Spaniards from Seville, contacted us through our website offering us to collaborate for the realization of a bilateral project. In the following talks with them, we realized that our organizations have many ideas and goals in common, which was an additional stimulus to make this project together.

By common efforts we ended up with the title of the exchange project: Odisea Natura or Nature Odyssey.

In the process of realizing the project we acquired organizing skills and proved ourselves to be loyal partners to our Spanish friends. The project itself had a very positive effect on local people and was a great opportunity for many young Bulgarians to meet Spanish people of their own age.

The thing that motivated us most of all while organizing this project was the fact that we are young people who still believe that we have the power to change the way foreigners see us; we believe that we can make them understand us and perceive the world the way we perceive it.

This project is the best way to show what our main objective is- to make something significant for ourselves and our society and to prove that young people in Bulgaria are willing to work in the name of their country. Through this project we believe that we can influence young people in Bulgaria and give them yet another reason to be proud of their country.

Being a reciprocal project, one of the main objectives was that the participants should become familiar with the special features of both countries and their natural wealth, which is rather different due to specific climate conditions as well as geographic location.

The sights and places we visited were of unique character and helped us realize the goals of the project. Thanks to our efforts our Spanish guests had great time in Bulgaria and at the same time they learned a lot about the local customs and morals.

Unfortunately Bulgaria is still facing one of the major problems of our age- pollution and its great impact on the future of the planet. After becoming a member of the European Union, Bulgaria will ratify its ecological legislation. That’s why one of the main priorities of this project was to learn more about the existing European legislation treating this problem.

Planning of the project

Working together with our colleagues from Spain, we made a thorough plan of the forthcoming events. The preparation for the exchange had two stages in which both parts, Association Tsiolkovsky and Grupo OUYEA, took part. Every detail of the project was accepted by the two organizations and the plan was well-organized and well-grounded. The participants in the project had major role in its planning. Every member of the two organizations was entrusted with personal tasks, and this way every member contributed to the whole project.

While preparing the project the Bulgarian participants worked in two teams, one of which had to formulate the plan and the other to execute it. The members of these teams were appointed by the governing body of the organization.

The team engaged with the preparation of the project had to make a plan for the exchange, after preliminary talks with our partners and the executive team.

On the other hand, the executive team had the important task to make the plan work. Every member of Association Tsiolkovsky took part in the preparation of this project and after much discussion we agreed on a plan which seemed the best possible to us. We gave full information concerning the preparation of the project to Grupo OUYEA, and we had their consent on every program detail. We also sent them photographs of all the places we planned to visit as well as the web-sites of many places of interest, museums and popular sights, which we were going to visit in Bulgaria.

Our hard work on this project was compensated- the project was more than successful and all the participants were pleased with their work together. We proved that we can be not only good partners but also friends and people who believe in each other and can learn a lot from one another.

Results achieved

The main goals of the project were the following:

1. To show our partners Bulgarian’s national wealth and this way make popular the unique character and beauty of the Bulgarian nature
2. To give chance to many young people to learn and experience nature
3. To make an international project
4. To give chance to a lot of young Bulgarians to cooperate with young people from other countries

From personal point of view the project was also successful- it gave all the participant precious knowledge about the world that surrounds us. We all realized how important it is to unite our efforts in the name of preserving nature. We understood that we can be guided by common goals and work in team to realize them.

In cultural aspect the exchange helped us learn a lot about the way of life of the people from the two countries.

1. We achieved integration of all the participants in the project.
2. One of the main purposes of the project was to make all the participants in it realize their own role in preserving nature.
3. The Bulgarian young people that were engaged in the project had the chance to work with many young people from Spain, which helped them learn a lot.
4. Despite the subject of the project, the exchange took cultural aspects as well. Our interest towards one another made us learn a lot about the two cultures and stimulated our desire to become more and more familiar with each other.
5. All forms of discrimination were absolutely forbidden.
6. We also learned a lot about European Union’s legislation concerning nature preservation. This was of great importance to all participants from Bulgaria as a future member of the EU.

For more information on the schedule of activities, please download the program.