Global Youth Service Day - Clean Up in Borjomi

This morning started with heavy rain and nobody was sure about the today's plans, even though all of us were meeting at Borjomi Public School #3 at 2 o'clock to go for a clean up. The rain lasted until 1 o'clock and than it stopped as somebody was praying for our event. As tree planting mission was postponed because of the weather we couldn't take another bad weather.

Everybody was at school even before 2 o'clock, and everyone seemed so excited. Than Our Coordinator arrived and we discussed our project and what, how and who was going to do it. I had to take pictures and write article about the event. I was very pleased as this is my favorite thing to do.
We talked about our Future plans such as planting trees on 30th of April, which is the second part of our project and than we left for our destination. It isn't far away, just 5 minutes walk from school. The place is Memorial which is called "vechni ogon" which is in Russian and it says "everlasting fire" this memorial is in honor of people who died in Second World War. Even though the territory is in the center of town it is very polluted by the refugees who live about this memorial and they keep throwing their litter on the ground. Our team members got the gloves and the trash bags and started clean-up.

The clean up started at 2:30 and my team members had a lot of fun during the process, we were enthusiastic about the event. there where approx. 160 trash bags full of litter. During the event people would stop and ask what where we doing and why. We were really proud to provide information to them. After all the bags where filled we started to carry them till the nearer trash bin, which was 200 meters away. But we had to make 3 round trips to get all the trash to the bin. it was too much fun and the biggest outcome was that people would stop by and say that the new generation is very responsible and that they are very proud of us. We felt that we where doing a good thing for our community and that's what matters the most.
We are looking forward to the other part of the project. I won't to take a chance and write a thank you for Borjomi Municipality Community Chair Mr. Besik Qurdadze for his support in our project and American Councils for International Education and GYSD matching grant program for the material and financial support they have or will provide during this project.

Sofiko Sherozia

Borjomi Public School #6
16.04.2011