2009 Programs And Events
U.S. Education Alums Celebrate Earth Day (04/26/2009)
About 20 alumni of U.S.-sponsored education programs joined a group of environmentally aware people for a two-day program commemorating Earth Day.
On April 25-26, about 80 people stayed at the Kelajak Camp near Khojikent, northeast of Tashkent, where the participants played games with environmental topics, talked about ways they can conserve resources and cleaned up a truckload of garbage from along the lower course of the Bulaksu River.
The event, called “Youth Generation for a Pure Bulaksu,” was organized by the Youth Environmental Network of Uzbekistan and the Eremurus environmental group, which has been organizing environmental programs and clean-ups along the Bulaksu River since 1982. The U.S. Embassy sponsored this year’s program through its Democracy Outreach Alumni Grant.
Participants came from Tashkent and surrounding areas, Termez, Samarkand and Nukus.
Most of the discussion was about ways to conserve energy and water resources, reduce household waste and keep the air clean, said Semruh Uvraimova, a Youth Environmental Network volunteer who helped organize the event. It is important for people to think about ways they can help conserve resources, she said.
“If we think about problems on an individual level, we can achieve more,” said Uvraimova, who spent the 2004-2005 academic year in Canton, Kansas, on the FLEX high school exchange program. “I always feel very sad when I see how people use resources, how they think they will never end.”
On the second day, the group braved the wet weather and picked up about 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) of garbage from the area around the river.
Earth Day was April 22, the date marking the first Earth Day in 1970. It was founded by Gaylord Nelson, a U.S. Senator from the State of Wisconsin, to force environmental issues onto the national agenda. Some environmental groups consider the first Earth Day “the birth of the modern environmental movement.”
It is commemorated by large and small environmental activities in countries around the world, which this year included events in Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Beijing and Washington, D.C., according to the Earth Day Network.
Yuriy Mun, a member of Eremurus and one of the program coordinators, said he was happy to see the number of participants has grown steadily in recent years.
“It’s especially pleasant to see that the project inspires people,” he said. “I’d like to believe that boys and girls will keep contributing, not necessarily in a big way, but with important input in resolving ecological problems.”