Clean Up the World is a community based environment project, developed and coordinated from Sydney by Clean Up Australia. It is designed to focus international attention on the massive volumes of waste choking our planet. This waste is not only a serious threat to our local and global environments, but also has a significant implications for the health and well-being of many milions of people.

The goals are:

• to bring together citizens from different regions in a simple activities that will positively assist their local environments,
• to share the information and practical experience on the issue,
• to create a media focus for clean-up activities thereby raising the awareness of governments, industries and communities about local environmental issues, particularly waste minimisation, recycling and waste management.

GREENWAY Head Office in Bratislava introduced and coordinated Clean Up activities in Slovak Republic together with nine NGOs. The Clean Up the World event was organized on 15-18 September 1995 and followed as a whole year campaign in many countries of the world. GREENWAY dedicated the project to the ENCY`95 National Program. The Clean Up activities were carried out by groups of volunteers - by GREENWAY NGO members in Slovakia which were working together with other citizens in their own communities to remove garbage from designated sites, separate waste for recycling and reusing. Sites are often public areas such as parks, markets, roadsides, beaches, rivers banks, etc.

The activities were complemented by environmental awareness seminars and discussions, community meetings, school activities, exhibitions and music entertaitments.

On the whole, Clean-ups activities engender a positive community spirit and unite the participants in a dedicated commitment to improve their own environment.

Principal sponsor for CUW in Slovakia was the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Bratislava and many local sponsors from all kind of business, organisations and local governments.

Information on concrete activities were published in national newspapers and journals in regional and local newspapers.

National, regional and local broadcasting corporations and TV informed continuosly on the events organized in different regions of Slovakia.

During the project period served GREENWAY as a contact point, clearinghouse, information service, organization and coordination body for Slovak Republic Clean Up the World campaign.

Amount of inhabitants involved: approximately 12.635 individuals and 162 schools (nursery, primary, secondary).

Results:

Slovak Republik was involved in the Clean Up the World campaign as an international event for the first time in this year. The campaign engaged inhabitants - children from the schools of all levels, environmental non-governmental organizations, local governments, business, institutions and citizens of towns and villages to react actively for improvement of their own environment.

Improved cooperation with other organizations from all parts of the society in the communities. As our groups informed, sometimes it was surprising how posisitiv have had the people from administration offices react and helped by organization of the activities without any bureaucracy.

At the coordination meeting and from practical activities experiences came up new ideas and themes for follow up the campaign.

Improved information of environmental problems and concrete activities of citizens in cooperation with mass-media.

The project activities have raised new ideas for specialized work of NGOs, and so new impulses for the democracy process in the country.

Cooperation with the CUW Coordination Committee in Czech Republic, exchange of information, written and published materials, experiences from the coordination and organization of the event in the both republics.

The information on the Clean Up project organized by GREENWAY was presented at the NGO-exhibition on the Pan-European Ministerial Conference "Environment for Europe", October 1995, Sofia, Bulgaria.

GREENWAY received an acknowledgement for coordination the campaign in Slovakia from Clean Up the World international coordination office based in Sydney, Australia.

Finally, the Clean Up the World campaign in Slovak Republik could be evaluated as a successful event which has raised environmental awareness of the inhabitants. It maked people enthusiastic about supporting this worthwhile community project. It could be seen as a framework for mobilizing community resources for sustainable development.

(Source: Campaign final report from Elena Vartikova)