The national coordinator for SPARE in Georgia is the environmental NGO Ekokhedva. Ekokhedva is participating in processes for development of education for sustainable development in Georgia, and has participated in SPARE since 2002. Ekokhedva opened a demonstration site for renewable energy in the Zoo of Tbilisi in 2007, and works also on sustainable energy management on village level.
Description
Ekovzgljad is an environmental organisation working with sustainable development in general, and with ecological education in particular. Ekovzgljad are running SPARE in around 100 schools. One of their challenges is the presence of schools with their educational program in Azeri and Armenian languages, but Ekovzgljad wants to use common work with the SPARE project to build bridges between different population groups. Cooperation across the borders with SPARE colleagues in Azerbaijan and Armenia is also a tool to achieve this.
Ekovzgljad had an agreement with the Ministry of Education for development of SPARE in Georgia, but with the velvet revolution in the autumn 2003 these agreements had lost their value. Ekovzgljad is now working to re-establish the good cooperation with their educational authorities, and hope to get good results on this in 2005.
Ekovzgljad is host for annual meeting of SPARE coordinators in 2005. For a meeting in Caucasus Georgia is the natural place, as Azerbaijan and Armenia still are in a state of war.)
Project SPARE in Georgia is supported by the Ministry of education and science of Georgia, and public and state organization actively participate in realization if the project.
SPARE includes 40 schools and 6 public organizations from 7 regions of Georgia.
The goal of the project is education of pupils and building up their awareness on environmental issues, and casting the light on general problems of energy use, economizing and resource use, as well as environmental protection. This project is helping school children to learn about problems of today energy use and about rational use of natural resources and gives number of practical suggestions how to save energy in schools and homes.
First edition of magazine ‘Egvispireti’ in national language
Within the program SPARE, in September 2005. we started to publish a magazine. This magazine is about SPARE project in Georgia, and is presenting some knowledge and practical solutions in energy saving.
Second edition of magazine ‘Egvispireti’ in national language
Within SPARE and with the support of Global Environmental Fund and UN Development Programme, , in October 2005 we have published new edition of the magazine. The edition deals with issues related to the global warming, anthropogenic and natural factors of climate change, as well as the role of energy saving.
Third edition of magazine ‘Egvispireti’ in national language
Within SPARE and with the support of Global Environmental Fund and UN Development Programme, in October 2005 we have published new edition of the magazine, dedicated to the biodiversity conservation. Main principles of sustainable development were pointed out, different conventions addressed to biodiversity were described as well as the ways these are linked to the rational natural sources use.
Children’s poems were published as well, written on theme - ‘My nature’.
Forth edition of magazine ‘Egvispireti’ in national language
Within SPARE and with the support of Global Environmental Fund and UN Development Programme, we published new magazine edition, in November 2005, with desertification as the main topic. In this edition, main causes of consequences of desertification and soil erosions were explained.
We also published statistic data with indicators of natural resources waste rates, mortality rates due to catastrophes, poverty and political conflicts that also have caused desertification.
In 2002-2004 we published:
- Material for Energy saving
- Working notebook
- National supplements (for the country-specific issues)
- Magazine Energy, describing in details problems of energy and possible solutions
