One of our favorite events in Gabrovo - the environmental festival Uzana Polyana Fest, this year was enriched with another zone - the youth zone. It was entrusted to the imagination and care of the Youth Center, and the pleasant shade and interesting events brought to us extremely many young people - both in age and at heart.
For the festival, we came up with a special game in which the participants had to solve riddles and complete challenges related to the Uzana area, its nature and the nature-friendly way of life. It was played for time, resourcefulness, knowledge and intelligence, and there were prizes.
We organized a wonderful workshop where the youngsters could make a wooden birdhouse - a difficult and time-consuming job that required dexterity and creativity. We will hang part of the houses on Uzana, in the place where the youth zone was located. The other part will beautify the renovated "Gradishte" eco-path, which the young people began to restore, receiving support under the Program for financing youth projects of the Youth Center.
We organized a great recreation area with hammocks and barbarones, where we played board games and human "Don't be angry man" game and listened to Vyacheslav Stoyanov's bicycle travels - from Alaska to Patagonia.
Ten volunteers and two lecturers from our partner University for Green Development in Brune, Norway were also part of the organization of our zone. They presented their university and green projects they are working on, and a special community building training was organized for the youth workers from the Youth Center.
The youth volunteers were also assigned two very important tasks. The first was to make the arch that welcomed the guests to the festival – flowers, herbs, cones, sticks – all the visitors took pictures there and sealed their pleasant walk. The second task was to take care of the cleanliness of the lawn and waste bins, to make sure they were not overflowing and to regularly replace the bags. Again a great job done, for which we have to thank the visitors as well. After a full day of festival on Saturday for example, a great concert in the evening and lots of pets, a small bag of rubbish and seven cigarette butts were collected from the lawn in the morning.
Great days were at Uzana, we are looking forward to the summer of 2023 and the next edition of the festival!
