Through emotions to environmental awareness

Any human activity leads to a constant environmental contamination, pollution of the planet. This applies to the Black Sea as well, which environmentalists recognized as one of the most polluted seas in the world. The Day reported that despite the international Black Sea Strategic Action Plan signed by Ukraine in 1996, now the sea is on the brink of an ecological disaster. It is hard to change the situation, because incredibly large amounts of waste are dumped into the water. But still, it is not hopeless yet. The experts think that starting with oneself is the main goal, people need to become more environmentally aware and realize responsibility for every action that can harm nature. This applies the most to the younger generation, who will have to live in very challenging environmental conditions if nothing is changed.

In this context, last year, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Coca-Cola Company introduced an ecological project “The Black Sea Box” (a part of a larger project “Every Drop Matters”). This is an innovative set that includes interactive materials, a manual for teachers, posters, booklets, games – all of them related to the subject of the preservation of the Black Sea. The authors of the idea initially decided to focus on the people who live near the Black Sea: school students of Kherson, Mykolaiv, Odesa oblasts, and the Crimean Republic. Students of more than 800 schools in these regions are already studying “The Black Sea Box.”

“It is important that this is an international project. Ukrainian, and Turkish, and Russian children receive the same information about the importance of preservation of the Black Sea ecosystem. When they become adults, they will quickly find common ground, carry identical values, will have a better understanding of each other and the importance of saving the Black Sea. Currently, about 33,000 Ukrainian school students got acquainted with this educational program,” said Olena Panova, deputy director of the UNDP department in Ukraine.

The joint educational project of UNDP and The Coca-Cola Company that was designed to increase environmental awareness in both adults and children was continued by opening an exposition dedicated to the Black Sea at the Kyiv “Water Information Center” (the Museum of Water). This exhibit introduces visitors to the current state of the ecosystem and the Black Sea, and is aimed to change people’s behavior by affecting their emotions, or at least to make visitors think about how often they pollute the environment.

“We supported the UNDP’s idea and offered to organize such exhibit: first, we acquaint visitors with the Dnipro River sources, the peculiarities of this river, and then focus our attention on the Black Sea and its problems,” said Oleksandr Berehovy, deputy director general of the “Water Information Center.” “We offered to create an aquarium, and also to show a film about the Black Sea, what its depths look like, and what animals live there. The film is dubbed, and you can hear the sound of the sea in the background. We believe that the Black Sea exhibit was created to the purpose, and its most essential goal is the impact on visitors’ emotions. The water “wall” before the entrance to the exhibit will wake certain emotions. Then, we are going to project the images of grass and earth on the floor. Everything will look beautiful in the beginning. Then you turn around and look under your feet to find a plastic bag, a can, a bottle. This has to make people feel uncomfortable for polluting the environment. Due to this effect, we talk less; instead of urging, we let people feel. It is possible to reach certain feelings through kind words, visualization, tactile senses. There are many pedagogic ways to influence people’s behavior, but, unfortunately, there are very few institutions in which these approaches are cultivated.

Walter Russell Gordon, CEO of “Coca-Cola Ukraine,” said that when the company began to work toward water conservation, they found out that people in Ukraine, Russia, and Turkey are very concerned about the state of the Black Sea. This caused the project expansion: it will soon be implemented in Romania, Bulgaria and Georgia. Thus, about 2 million children, and adults along with them, who live near the Black Sea, will study materials about the need of the Black Sea ecosystem preservation.