Greek Learning About Politics Blog

Authors: Silva, Milena, Stefan and Silvia

This is a storytelling project created for developing awareness of environmental problems. Users can read the initial situation and then develop their own story, following the guidelines provided by authors.

Once upon there was a beautiful little town called Zedlandia, it was surrounded by nature, the streets were full of trees and flowers and there also was a very nice park just outside the town.

Stefan was a very sensitive and romantic sixteen years old boy; he went to the local high school and  he was a real good student, in fact he was planning to study environmental engineering at the university of Zedlandia. Stefan also loved nature and animals and he had a pretty nice dog called Spino

which he used to take to the wood, which surrounded the city.

Stefan in the wood

Obviously, as in every respectable stories, we also have a girl and she will soon meet him. Our girl is Silvia, a sweet and humorous Italian girl whose only problem is that she talks too much. She too loves nature and in particular she is passionate about butterflies and she cooperates with a school  project on these amazing insects; for this reason she used to go to the wood to search different species of butterflies to observe.

Silvia searching for butterflies

It is understood that Silvia and Stefan will meet in the wood and that is exactly what happened one hot summer day. Silvia was hanging around in the wood with her camera trying to catch some interesting photos, but also Stefan was walking in the wood with Spino and he was completely absorbed by his maths exam of the following day, that he didn’t realize he had a parnassius apollo on his head.

parnassius apollo

Could you imagine Silvia’s reactions when she saw that butterfly?

“Stop, stop, stop” shouted Silvia

“What have I done” answered frightened Stefan

“You have a beautiful…head”

“Thank you!!! You too!”

“No, no, no, I meant you have a beautiful butterfly on your head!”

“What? Butter? I don’t like butter!”

“Noo, the insect, you have a beautiful parnassius apollo on your head!”

“Ohhhhh” exclaimed Stefan distraught.

After this terrible first meeting, Stefan was so in love with Silvia that he started walking every day at the same time, no matter what happened in the world, with his lovely Spino… Silvia too discovered that she was always thinking about Stefan and she started searching butterflies every day, at the same hours in the same wood.

Obviously after having run for 300 km up and down in the wood they fell in love and got married.

The married couple

This should be a very happy ending, but 10 years later, when the lovely couple together with their two twins Milena and Silva,  decided to go back to visit the place where they fell in love, they had a terrible surprise:

“Oh my god Stefan! Look at what happened to our beautiful love nest!”

“Someone ruined it with an illegal dump!”

Ugly dump in the wood

Ugly dump in the wood

“No more butterflies and no more walking with your dog! That’s awful!”

“What shall we do?”

“What shall we do??? We must do something!!!”

As they were so deceived by this terrible discovery, the lovely couple soon started to activate to clean up their wood. They wanted their children to enjoy the wood as they did 10 years before and they knew they had to involve people, shake them, create awareness to avoid the creation of new illegal dumping.

And in your opinion… what did they do?

[How would you start solving this problem? Go on by yourself…]

Read how Silvia and Stefan approached the problem

They started very practically, first of all they gathered some friends and they soon engaged in cleaning the wood as much as they could.

[Compare Silvia and Stefan’s activity with what you would like to do]

Of course, this was not enough and the problem was not solved yet: the amount of garbage was so big that they could not carry everything away just with their hands, they needed further means, a place to put them and other hands willing to work.

[If you were them, what would you do to fix it?]

Silvia and Stefan organized a campaign in Zedlandia, they needed money to go on with their project and they needed other people’s awareness of the problem.

[Can you organize a awareness campaign in your class or in your school? How would you organize this process? Would you use social networks to involve people in the project? If you don't know how to do it you can enquire asking local and national authorities...]

Now let’s have a look at what Stefan and Silvia did…

In order to catch people’s attention they started from the youngest, campaigning in schools: they provided children with clear instructions on how to recycle garbage and on how to use the existing infrastructure instead of just abandoning garbage in the wood.

Obviously they also needed adults’ support, so they started organizing sporty events, theatre representations, ballet shows and cabaret nights so that the money gathered could be used for their cause.

[Do you think you would be able to manage this problem or would you prefer to rely on adults to do this? Give your opinion and reasons for your point of view.]

In 3 months time they got so much money that they could clean the wood and restore it with trees and flowers, they built a research centre for butterflies which was Silvia’s dream and Silvia and Stefan’s daughters could finally spend Sunday afternoons running and playing with Spino in the wood!

[Do you think you could be successful as our protagonists have been?]

[Could you give some examples of similar initiatives which took place in your area?]

Now, change your point of view to rewrite the story so that you could be:

• Silvia and Stefan’s daughters who continue their parents’ activity
• the minister of environmental issues
• a member of the green party
• the mayor of the town in Zedlandia
• a super hero like Supergreenman or Supergreenwoman

Make the best for environment!!!