Dear Eco-Schools family,
One of the educational establishments participating in Eco-schools/Green Flag program in Russia asked my NGO "Keep St.-Petersburg Tidy" to help them find support for their efforts in convincing the Regional authorities to cancel plans of starting production of Ferro-Chromium alloy in their town. The school Children's Environmental Centre is situated in the town Tikhvin of Leningrad Region (3 hours drive to the East from St. Petersburg). I am sending you the translation of their letter. This educational establishment is a newcomer in Eco- Schools programme in Russia and to my mind it is very important to support them in their activities. Thanking you in advance.
Warmest regards,
Olga Madison
   
   
Dear Eco-Committee members,
   
The Environment of our town Tikhvin and neighbouring areas is in danger, because a private company is going to start producing Ferro-Chromium alloy here. Such kind of industry is very polluting. It requires fine filtration (at least 3 stages) of air emissions and even in that case must be situated in at least 3km from the residential areas. In Tikhvin the production will be situated in the town. It means that more than 10000 people will live and/or work only 1km away from the factory. According to the information book under the edition of professor V.A.Filov (publication ISB #5-7245-0264-X) both compounds Cr(III) and Cr(VI) are very harmful substances. In combination with fresh water Cr₂O₃ turns into CrO₃, a substance of the first class of danger. The preliminary information shows that the concentration of that substance in the air will be 20 times higher than the maximum permissible concentration. Even in smaller amounts it may cause lungs, kidney, liver, stomach and heart diseases, reproduction abnormalities, cancer, problems with memorizing and logical thinking, as well as skin diseases and allergy. It is very well shown by other areas with similar industrial enterprises.
   
Moreover the prevailing winds will bring that kind of pollution to the Ladoga Lake which is the main source of drinking water for St. Petersburg with 5 million citizens. In 1997 the referendum held in Tikhvin on that issue showed that 97 per cent of the local population were against that production. At that time the plans were stopped but not cancelled. Now another firm is trying to start the production with the same technology and the same filtration system. The production has been allowed by the Regional authorities (of the Leningrad Region) that ignored opinion of local citizens in Tikhvin.
   
We would like you to support us in our efforts in saving the environment and send letters by e-mail and/or fax to the authorities of different levels. All additional information and draft letter could be asked from the Eco-Schools National Programme Manager for Russia, Olga Madison (olgamadison@yahoo.com), Keep St. Petersburg Tidy.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Looking forward to hearing from you very soon.
With best regards,
Eco-Committee of the Children's Environmental Center of Tikhvin

(July 2004)

   
On the 16^th of January the first Green Flag in Russia was awarded to the Secondary School #637 of St. Petersburg. The flag was given to the representatives of the Eco-council by the Vice-governor of St. Petersburg Mr Sergei Tarasov. As the pilot phase of ES implementation in North-west Russia was held in the frame of the joint project with the NGO "Association of the Danish Geography Teachers" supported by the Small Grant Facility, the General Consul of Denmark attended the ceremony. He mentioned that Denmark was always active in environmental projects and that its institutions, including NGOs, were always ready to share their experience with Russian colleagues. The Vice-head of the District administration Mr Vladimir Ushakov congratulated the school and promised to assist it in getting in contact with local enterprises dealing with waste management for exchange of information and may be getting some sponsorship for school projects. He also ensured that other 43 schools of the district would be interested in implementing the ES programme. (*)
   
Ms Olga Madison expressed her gratitude to the most active students (11^th class), teachers, caretakers, parents, Eco-Council and of course, the director of the school Ms Galina Medvednikova, for their wonderful work and united efforts in reaching their goals. She also noted that the support of authorities of all levels is essential for both the school's projects and the programme development and thanked Mr Ushakov for his support to the school in its activities. Ms Galina Tsvetkova, the chairperson of "Keep St. Petersburg Tidy" NGO and Ms Nina Masharskaya, representative of the NGO "Eco-schit" ("Eco-shield") wished that the school could develop ES further and join other international and national programmes for sustainable development promotion.
   
The ceremony was attended by representatives of all ES in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, representatives of district educational authorities, teachers from neighbouring schools, and also Mr Vladimir Sidelnikov, the director of the Centre for coordination of international scientific-research and education programmes of St. Petersburg Administration, and Ms Novoselova, head of the local municipality. A nice surprise was the performance arranged by young ecologists of the school’s class 6a, who showed very clearly the advantages of the ES programme. The ceremony was finalised by singing the Eco-hymn.
   
(*) St. Petersburg is divided into 11 districts and 111 municipalities.
The school #637 is located in Moskovski district which has about 350.000 inhabitants.
The population of St.Petersburg is 5 million people.

(January 2004)

   
The project identified as Implementation of an Environmental Management System (EMS) in the University area (Eco-University as the next step of Eco-schools development) was made possible through a grant of the Tempus Programme. It is a three years project which aims at "greening" the educational process (curriculum development). The first step will be to work with teachers improving the curriculum (1st year); subsequently, the project's pilot-phase will involve students to test to the new curriculum (2nd year); the final step will be the internationalisation, calibrating the curriculum to international requirements (Bologna Process), involving other strategic universities for promotion, dissemination (3rd year).
   
On July 2nd 2003, the workshop 'Eco - System University' aiming at collecting feedbacks on the implementation of the Eco-Schools Programme in the University area, was held in Ravenna, Italy. A SWOT analysis was made in order to elaborate good ideas for the project.
   
Recently, from September 20 to 30, 2003, several events were organised in St Petersburg by an international team. This 'team' included Olga Madison and Raffaella Riccobene (Eco-Schools National Managers for the Russia Federation and for Italy), Hans Vondrak (project leader of the Swedish Hunters' Association, responsible for the program “Green Lessons”) and Billy Ederloef (LeAF National Manager for Sweden). While visiting the only school in Russia involved in both programmes (Eco-Schools and LeAF), Olga, Raffaella, Hans and Billy attended literature and history lessons about some environmental topics and one eco-council session where they had the possibility to exchange ideas with students and teachers. Thanks to the efforts of Mr. Spirin, Vice rector of International Relations of the State Technological University of Plant Polymers, the team was invited to give information about its activity to Vladimir Sidelnikov, director of the Coordination Center for International Scientific-Technical and Educational Programs. This collaboration is also important for the development of Eco-Schools programme in Russia due to the increase of possibilities for promotion and dissemination of the programme for the educational authorities and school masters. The conference on Friday, the 26th, had a very rich agenda about Eco-Schools, LeAF and Green Lessons programmes: the teachers involved in ES program spoke about their pilot experience. The feedback was positive: more schools expressed interest in joining the ES and LeAF programs; personal contact between actors of ES program in different countries was established; it was interesting to know about ES activities in Italy and program management structure; the preliminary agreement about exchange of letters, drawings among schools in Italy, Russia and Sweden was reached; Olga was invited to make a presentation about ES at three seminars in October; contact persons were defined for each participating region of Russia for further promotion of ES. On Saturday, the team visited the Center for children's and youth tourism of Lomonosov, and presented the programmes briefly. On Tuesday (September 23), Raffaella made a presentation on the project for ES implementation in the University area and its connection with the Environmental Management System. The presentation resulted in raising the interest of TUPP staff to the project and gaining of extra partner - the Leningrad State University (LSU). The administration of TUPP met the team and promised to support the project and contributed with providing official documents for project application writing. The representative of LSU met Raffaella and Olga on Monday (September 29) and contributed to the project application writing.

(September 2003)

   
The project "Eco-Schools programme promotion in the North-Western Russia" is financed by the Small Grant Facility programme and is being implemented in cooperation with the "Association of the Danish Geography Teachers". The project includes:
* A visit to Denmark of 10 delegates (2 NGO leaders, 2 representatives from the educational authorities and 6 teachers);
* A visit to St. Petersburg of 5 Danish teachers, to see the schools and participate in the Eco-Schools Regional Conference;
* Two workshops for the Russian participants in the beginning and in the end of the project;
* Regional Conference in St. Petersburg on April 25, 2003;
* Translation, adaptation and publication of information materials on Eco-Schools and guidelines for the teachers;
* There is also an idea to establish direct partnership between Russian and Danish Eco-schools.

(April 2003)