Outdoor Ambassador

"1.Create a safe and positive experience for Albanian youth and instill in them an appreciation of nature and a sense of responsibility for protecting it. 2. Develop youth leadership skills in areas of environmental stewardship, community service, and team building. 3. Educate youth about Albania’s environment, ecology, biodiversity, waterways, and wildlife; enabling them to educate and improve their local communities." These are Outdoor Ambassador's goals. Our plan of action was really simple as we started with some high school students volunteers. 1. Two of my fiends and I build up a project after taking the "Project Management and Design" training from Peace Corps. 2. After being approved we were able to order for Outdoor Ambassador shirts at no cost. 3. With the help of the principals at Fieri's High Schools we could organize meeting with students and inform them for these project we created. 4. During this time we were working with a Youth Center so they could help us financially. 5. We came up with some community actions we could take like cleaning up parts of the city, recycling paper in every high school, promoting the use of bicycles instead of cars when not necessary. 6. We send an official letter to Municipality where we welcomed them if they ever wanted to help and be part of our projects 7. After a month of lobbing over Outdoor Ambassador Project we finally had our first meeting as a group at Fieri's Public Library. 8. Our official inauguration of the group was the excursion in LLogara. (It was a planed excursion we had maps so we stopped at a certain place and in two groups we created a competition: Who would go first at the top of the mountain. The two group were using maps, compass and walkie talkie. We also talk about being safe in nature and to eat we had only organic food. September, 2008) 9. Our next action was for Sept 21 2008 for the CAR-FREE DAY. We went on the center of the city promoting TIRE RECYCLING. The day before we painted some old tires showing that you can use them as a piece of art because burning them releases SO2(Sulfur dioxide) which is really dangerous. 10. After that we can some community work like painting some aspartames, cleaning up some neighborhoods, tree planting. 11. We had another Outdoor Excursion hiking in Bogova. There is a beautiful waterfall there and we spend the night there. Our goal for this excursion was to leave without any "FOOTPRINTS" (By this I mean not to damage the nature to not leave things that do not decomposed. These are briefly some of the action we took as we started the group. We, 3 leading persons of the group, were present in all the Outdoor Ambassadors Camps, conferences and trainings organized by Peace Corps. This group went on for 3-years with me being one of the creators and leading members. I know that the group is still working though as we passed it to the generation after us.