Interview with Juraj Oravec
Centre of Environmental and Ethical Education Zivica (CEEV Živica), Slovakia
City where the organisation is based: Bratislava & Zvolen
Number of staff in the organisation/working with Eco-Schools: 25/5
What do you prefer?
- Dogs or cats? Dogs
- Sea or mountains? Mountains
- Chocolate or chips? Chocolate
- Film or book? Film
- City or countryside? Countryside
- If you could sing one song on a music competition show on television, what would it be?
Hah you know, BeeGees Stayin' alive. (And what a great show it was! Editor)
- What is the funniest thing that has happened to you recently?
Hah I guess it was the International NOM in Paris - when I tried to sing BeeGees at the karaoke show. Thanks for support from my colleague Jan from Czech Republic. He sent a video of this part of the show to my colleagues and it was rotating a whole month throughout the office.
A high point of the programme, hopes and visions
The Eco-Schools programme in Slovakia is mainly about participation at schools, by this I mean participation between teachers and children. Our educational system has a long way to go to become "European quality" so our programme is one of the important reforming tools to make our system better ... and this is my big challenge. Without educated children in a quality educational system, our country cannot educate better people.
Activities by CEEV Živica
We did a lot of things this year. For 321 schools we ran two grant calls, five side project programme advances, 13 teacher workshops in Eco-Schools Themes and we got huge support from the President of Slovak Republic, Andrej Kiska, at the last Eco-Schools ceremony. Right now we are working on an Eco-Schools Conference, Global Action Days in April, and Eco-Schools twinning. We are looking for partners to start FEE Eco Campus. Fingers crossed.
An inspiring story by CEEV Živica
Students at one of our elementary schools in a small village were not happy to see a lot of cars in front of their school. It was stinky, noisy and definitely not good. They decided to make a "walk bus" so they created their own "walk bus bus stops" and told all of the times when the walk bus will travel through the village.
They pick each other up at the planned bus stops and travel safely by foot with no eco footprint. They inspired teachers too, and travel before and after school all together.
