Annual report of the BOKOR/Ecogroup (1993/94) 1. General report -- The BOKOR/Ecogroup held 10+2 meetings
(strictly according to the plans) in the last school year. Every
meeting started with a short lecture given by a very well
prepared lecturer (Zsombok György, Babos Tamás, Farkas István,
György Lajos, Victor András, Szõke Ildikó, Kéry Magdolna, Kaszap
Márta), then all other members of the group entered the
discussion. Then questions of organization were discussed and
sometimes some bartering came next. In June Garay András took us
to the Hundertwasser exhibition where we met representatives of
`Bokor region'-s, and later we had to hold an extra session, to
distribute the tasks of the next year.
2. Letters -- The group's list of addresses gradually
increased, so at the beginning we sent out 108 letters of
invitation. This number increased to 120 for the last four
meetings. With the support of the Partnership Program we could
photocopy the material of the meeting 10 times during the year,
and distribute it. This way it became possible to take part in
our work even for the members living far from Budapest.
The number of participants at the meetings was usually between
15 - 20. This number has never been less than 12 (the number of
apostles), and never more than 30 - 35, so we could always talk
together.
3. New organization -- At the extra meeting in June we divided
the work of organisation into smaller tasks (e.g. planning,
writing the annual report, the invitations, posting, writing of
applications and articles, making notes, etc.). The people
taking part in it: Demeczky Jenõ, Farkas István, Szeredi Éva,
Topál Ildikó, Victor András and others.
4. BOCS Foundation -- Thanks to Simonyi Gyula we have our own fund.
Motto:
... The goal of the fund is making peace among humans, between humans and
the nature, environment and nature protection and strengthening
of the peace and solidarity in the human society by applying
both the practical and theoretical experiments of the Bokor
network. Founders: Csutkainé Szabó Márta, Farkas István, Végh
András. Funds: Forints 100,000. Governing body: Bognár Péter,
Demeczky Jenõ, Dõry István (secretary), Simonyi Gyula
(President), Tanos Gábor, Topál Ildikó. We have a logo, a
rubber-stamp, a bank account, a tax reference, etc. We may even
have a person employed (doing his civilian service for the fund
instead of a military service).
5. Demeczky Jenõ's excellent board game -- About 500
environmentalists and teachers could get the well known `Decide
yourself' environmental lifestyle game with the help of Demeczky
Jenõ and friends thanks to a KTM grant. Jenõ offered to help in
writing future applications for similar grants.
6. Farkas Pista's floppy action (2.1 Gigabytes!) -- The GAIA
press review consists of 4.5 MB (3000 pages) useful green
information - the result of 3 years restless work of György
Lajos. 3 MB is the nationwide database of teachers interested in
environmental education (about 3500 teachers). This was copied
onto hundreds of disks by Farkas István and sent to 280 school
teachers, some clubs, institutions, private persons and
associations. According to the feedback, around 70% of the
people who received it could easily use it, 20% had some
problems with the installation, (lack of proper equipment, or
experts, or simply time) and only about 10% was unable to use
it. Some of these people wrote back some useful pieces of advice
how to make the system more easy to use, some even wanted to pay
for it. The whole action - not counting the enormous amount of
work (moving 2100 MB, formatting 900 disks, packing etc.) of
Farkas István - costed only 13500 Ft.
7. The marvellous Ecocamp of Németh Marietta -- I had the
opportunity to take part in the ecocamp of Nemeth Marietta,
where children of 7-14 learned to admire the beauty of the life
and nature. The high quality programme consisted of memorable
excursions, botanical, ornithological, petrological, enviromental
lectures and workshops, and the high standard catering was
provided by the cook Eugen.
8. Eco-ethical "thinking together" group (Noah Club) -- NEW!
An important part of the ecogroup's program of the coming year are
some new types of meetings where we will try to think together about
eco-ethical problems. Simonyi Gyula recommended the name Noah Club, to
remind us of the life preserver Noah, and also of the Club of Rome.
We would like more and more people, motivated by ethical and/or
environmental reasons, to discuss some problematic situations or
opinions in writing. We also recommended that after two months
of discussion the position of the participants should be unified
and formed into a declaration suitable for publications or
lobbying.
Anyone can recommend a topic, if he/she is prepared to take part
in coordinating the discussion. Anyone can contribute to the
discussion, if he/she believes his opinion to be important. The
declaration will include the names of those contributors, who
ask for their (or their organisation's) names to be on the
declaration.
The first topic to be discussed is
"Signboards---Advertisement---Brain wash". The person responsible
is András Victor.
9. Green Spider -- We have four computers within the Green
Spider electronic network. We take part in the campaigns of the
network and use it to disseminate our news and declarations. With
the help of REC we installed 8 new modems in the E-mail
network.
10. Activities at Szentendre -- We bombarded the council of
Szentendre with our green suggestions. These were also published
in local newspapers and were implemented most of the time: a)
new waste management ideas, b) a new decree on public land use
banning giant posters, c) rebuilding of the park and the cross
"Tobakos", d) lobbying for sponsorship of projects on ecological
education (we won funding for such a project: Dust measurement -
an action by pupils in Szentendre, Forints 40,000).
11. Planting trees in 226 schools -- Following an unexpected
sponsorship offer from the Ministry of Agriculture, we organised
a large scale tree planting in schools selected from those who
earlier declared their willingness to "green" their environment.
The schools were given Forints 8,000 each for seedlings. Around
3,000 saplings were planted by the end of March. The work was
supervised by the Wood Management Authority, our contribution
was completely voluntary. We hope to repeat the action in
October with further 1,000 schools.
12. Collection of used batteries -- We organised the
collection of used batteries in schools, with the help of
Ministry of Education and Culture. We contacted over 1000 schools
and the collection containers were already delivered to about 800 places.
We estimate that 30-50 tons of heavy metal waste will be collected
and deposited at the Aszód dangerous waste disposal plant.
13. Video campaign -- With the help of the Partnership
Program we are now distributing video casettes amongst
teachers of environmental education, full of film fragments
dealing with environmental protection. The casettes will be
used in upper comprehensive and secondary schools.
14. Campaigns we joined -- just a list: anti-smoking, against
cigarette advertisements, against parking on the pavements or
bicycle roads, against the privatisation of woods, for the
creation of a law on environmental protection, for energy
efficiency, for selective waste collection, against giant
posters and other brainwashing ads, for the popularisation of
cycling, supporting Cousteau's campaign for the rights of future
generations, against the southern motorway in Hungary, for the
development of railroads, for bicycle carriage facilities on
trains, underground, etc.
15. Guest appearances -- We were invited by various
communities to hold lectures on ecology, discussing why and how
should the environment be protected.
16. Actions in progress -- Just a list: publication of the
Newsletter, battery collection, paper collection, tree planting
in 1000 schools, distribution of video casettes, the
implementation of the local waste management system, the Noah
discussion group on ecological ethics, further development of
the Green Spider network, and last but not least: making our
life styles greener.