Almost 30 participants from Czech Republic, Slovakia, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Latvia, Turkey, Romania, Portugal and Poland met to explore sustainable youth work and development of sustainable communities and organizations.

The main theme is sustainable organizational and project management in organizations active on the local, national and international level. The objectives of the activity were to support cooperation of the organizations and volunteers to run international projects; exchange best practices in the international youth work; bring information about possibilities offered by the Youth in Action and Visegrand Fund programme as well as the existing network of International Young Naturefriends.

The special focus was given to sustainable mounitaneering and sustainable outdoor activities, with a particular focus on sustainability in outdoors in cooperation between partners from and activities organized within Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia (Visegrad countries).

Several renowned experts delivered workshops during the meeting

• Transition movements for sustainable communities and organizations by Lee Brain. Lee currently resides in Prince Rupert, B.C.- Canada and is co-founder of Transition Prince Rupert. He studied psychology, dialogue and sustainable community development at Simon Fraser University. He moved away from the city to his hometown and has found his passion coordinating people to create resilient and sustainable communities. As Lee attended the Transition Movement conference in London, he joined PW 2012 for two days to share his knowledge on transition movement with us.
• Ecological footprint of organizations, reducing the planetary impact through sensible project and organizational management by Janis Brizga.  Janis is executive director in Latvian NGO “Green Liberty” and had been consulting various organizations about sustainable solutions in consumption practices. He is co-author of the manual on sustainable consumption and author of various other publications.
• Sustainable tourism and sustainable mountaineering by Christian Baumgartner. Dr. Christian Baumgartner is landscape ecologist and works since 2005 as Secretary General for Naturefriends International. He is lecturer at the IMC Krems (www.fh-krems.ac.at) and its off-site program in Qingdao (China) and in the expert board for the Sustainable Tourism Master Program of the FH Eberswald (D). Christian Baumgartner is member of several tourism related advisory boards such as the EU Tourism Sustainability Group (DG enterprise and industry), the UNWTO expert group for sustainable tourism indicators, the advisory boards for the Austrian and for the European Ecolabel for tourism accommodations and advices industry related bodies. He is specialized in development, implementation and monitoring of sustainable tourism and sustainable regional development. He guided several sustainable tourism development projects in Europe and (South) East Asia. His latest focus is on tourism related mobility and climate protection.

For the copies of presentations of Lee, Janis and Christian, please go to “Documents” tab.
A special focus during the meeting was put on sustainability of outdoor activities and topics in environmental education specific for the organizations in Visegrad group.

You can find the pictures from the meeting by following this link: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.434166743285610.86703.152212478147706&type=1

You can read an article with impressions from an Austrian Naturefriend Ferdinand Reimer here: http://sppmd.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/international-young-naturefriends-conference-in-poland/

You can read the letter with impressions from Hungarian Young Naturefriend Balázs Kajor here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/43652459/Balazs_Article.pdf

Press release: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/43652459/Press%20release_PW%202012_%20Visegrad.pdf

www.visegradfund.org