Project:  FRIENDS OF SHARRA

Description: We live and work in the lower Pollog region, between Sharr Mountains and the city of Tetovo. There are many benefits provided by livings in this area, being surrounded by the nature and the beautiful Sharr Mountain while also having close access to 2 capital cities (Skopje and Prishtina) and just 10 km to Tetovo. This gives us an understanding about the situation in both urban and rural areas. While the part of Sharr Mountain (Kosovo) is protected as a national park, the Macedonian side is not. According to the research of the platform “Friends of Sharra”, which our organization is part of, “83% of the local population that lives in the municipalities along the Sharr Mountain wants the mountain to be declared as a National Park” (http://mes.org.mk/nov-sajt/?p=4548&lang=en ). Although the percentage of interested people is large, there is still a lot of work to be done in order our aim to be achieved. We believe that after proclaiming it a national park, the problems would decrease.

In the EU progress report for 2015 about Macedonia is clearly stated: “Air pollution levels remain high. They pose serious risks to health and they need to be addressed urgently. Implementation of measures laid down in the national plan for air quality protection remains limited and insufficient, although some general measures were implemented. Data reporting and dissemination of information on air quality improved. Adequate financial resources are needed to support the automatic air quality monitoring network.”(http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/pdf/key_documents/2015/20151110_report_the_former_yugoslav_republic_of_macedonia.pdf, page 67)
Specific environmental problems that we identified in our region, which are also written in the climate change strategy of the Municipality of Tearce (2014-2020), created by our NGO and financed by USAID, are: People are illegally cutting trees, which destroy the eco system, furthers the erosions and creates an unsustainable environment. Many people still throw away and burn their garbage in nature, which pollutes the air and soil.
A major force behind those problems is the lack of knowledge and awareness in the local community about the consequences caused by those actions.
Also, the Municipality of Tearce has great potential for developing eco-tourism. At this moment, the local citizens do not know much about the existing possibilities.
By carrying out this project we seek to change the behavior of the people and to help improve the current situation. We believe that a volunteer from Europe would provide a good opportunity to share environmental protection measures from their country and to connect and work with the community.

Overall aim:
Raising awareness and promotion of sustainable and healthy environment

Objectives:
Raising awareness about the environmental protection
Promoting the beauties of Sharr Mountain
Promoting the platform for declaring Sharr Mountain as a National park
Increasing knowledge and skills about the environmental protection
Promoting the recycling management
Initiating eco-tourism in the region of Sharr Mountain
Increasing active participation in the society
Increasing intercultural awareness
Improving foreign language competencies

The selection was made from the ‘CED’ team, together with the partner organization made the preliminary selection of the two volunteers for ‘Friends of Sharra’ project. They were selected in a fair, transparent and objective way, regardless of their ethnic group, religion, sexual orientation and political opinion. The chosen volunteers are:
Jurica Markovic – 23-year old male participant from Croatia. Jurica finished high school gymnasium. He was engaged in Eko centar Latinovac for more than 2 years as volunteer and project coordinator about many ecologic activities. He likes to work on gardening and new ways of modern agriculture. Also he likes the nature a lot, so he is interested in recycling and finding ways to decrease the polution. He is willing to share his experiences working in the organization to the young people and the organization team.

Agnieszka Zahorska– 27-year old Polish female participant. She is very experienced in CSO sector, implementing various activities from being a volunteer in many projects, to managing her projects. She is very active in promoting the human rights and helping the young people to implement their ideas and solve social problems. She likes the nature and thinks that it's our main role to protect it and improve the situation. She likes the rural tourism and she have read and explored that topic about some time ago. So she have high motivation to implement many local activities.