YEP Meeting in Stuttgart

September 17, 2011

written by Saskia Bauer (Pangaea Magnetic North Pole Expedition YEP)

After there has already been one YEP-Meeting in Stuttgart last year, this was the second time for Young Explorers from all over Germany, Switzerland, Austria and France to spend a fun and active day together.

These meetings are normally organized to see each other again and get to know new YEPs who are interested in Pangaea and usually the new ones are the minority. But today there was the same amount of „old“ and „new“ YEPs which is a great success and shows that our generation is up to doing something for our nature.

The topic of the day was „Goodbye to Garbage“, related to the Green Wave Project.

After everybody was familiar with all the names we started off with some presentations about the Serbia Project, the Nunavut Expedition and a brief introduction to the problem of trash in our world. We learned that it takes a few months for paper to decompose, for cigarettes many years and that Styrofoam can't decompose, it's impossible and it will stay on earth forever while killing animals that think it's something to eat.

To tackle this big problem we cleaned up the park of Stuttgart. When we arrived there at noon the lawn was quite clean. After only two hours there were bottles, plastic cups and plastic bags everywhere! We filled eight big bags with trash which was sometimes really funny: If you need a new collection of glasses for your kitchen or a belt which fits to your new trousers – just have a look at the park, you can get everything there!

Although there are trashcans every twenty meters people are to lazy to walk this little distance and put the rubbish in there. Some just leave their food bags and bottles on the grass when they're going – even if the bin is just a few meters away. That's shocking and also quite sad.

That's why we took action by drawing footprint tracks on the ground in the direction of the bins to encourage the people to use them. Hopefully it won't rain too soon because then our chalk footprints will unfortunately disappear again but we hope that they'll stay in the people's mind.

All in all this meeting was a great success, we had a lot of fun while doing something good. We learned from each other's experiences and could pass on our own.

It's always a pleasure to meet teenagers who have exactly the same concerns and worries about nature and are up to taking action. Thanks to all of you!

German YEPs:
Anna Ndiaye
Ann-Kathrin Kaiser (USA Selection Camp)
Fabian Bazlen
Hanna Frühauf
Jenny Höra
Jule Holland (USA Selection Camp)
Julia Settlin
Konstantin Sergijenko
Larissa Zier
Leonard Schölch (Nunavut Selection Camp)
Philipp Quenzer
Rebecca Berker (Borneo Project)
Ricarda Schenker (Nunavut Expedition)
Saskia Bauer (Magnetic North Pole Expedition)
Simon Straetker (New Zealand Expedition)
Theresa Kaiser (USA Selection Camp)

Swiss YEPs:
Birke Rebholz-Chaves
Christopher Barco (Magnetic North Pole Expedition)
Luana Rebholz-Chaves (Magnetic North Pole Expedition)

French YEP:
Alizée Cugney

Austrian YEP:
Mario Löscher (USA Selection Camp)