Izabelin is a place where civilisation and nature coexists. We want to create a panel for exchanging views and ideas about the impact of anthropic pressure and climate change on the forest. A project where locals, KPN authorities, NGOs, can meet together and exchange ideas will foster climate change awareness and its impact on nature surrounding us. Project has a special focus on the youth of our community, but we trust all age groups will take part in various activities of the project.

Izabelin Municipality, Warsaw West District, Mazovia Province

For our community one of the areas of misunderstandings is the vision of Izabelin municipality development. Some want to create infrastructure of a small town, while others want our villages to develop in a synchronous way with the nature surrounding us. There is also lack of trust of the local community towards KPN authority that manages the forest. People don’t understand how KPN plans to address climate change and they would like to have some ways to influence it. We would like to address following challenges: increase awareness of local community to climate change and the impact it will have on the forest. Creating means of discussing and solving issues of diverse groups within the local community.

• Local community of Izabelin municipality – we expect app. 1000 people will take part in the activities envisaged by the project.
• School children and youth of the local community – 200 – 300 children who are expected to get involved.
• Employees of Kampinos National Park – people who will take part in the activities of the project.
• One day tourists, participants of debates and events, offline and online.

Entire duration of the project – education stream in local school about eco system of the forest, climate changes and anthropic pressure thereon. Expected end results – code of best practises for living in harmony with the forest.

Once per quarter
• Educational workshops in the forest. Participants learn about forest management from employees of KPN as well as other subject matter experts in climate change
• Debates in local culture centre – climate change presented from different perspectives. Meetings aimed at improving common understanding and agreeing fields of engagement of different groups in addressing climate change impact on the forest. Debates will also be used to present the progress of educational stream in school. Involvement of youth in the debates, including Youth Strike for Clime and the scouts.
• Workshops for groups in conflict on active listening, dialogue, creating resolution of common challenges

June 2022 – additional “Green Day for Climate” at yearly cultural event in our community – Izabelin Literary Festival. It is books festival devoted to collision of civilisation with nature. During the Green Day for Climate an award for an ecological book of the year will be given.

The end results – municipal educational nature trails, publications, resolutions and works of invited artists as result of debates, cultural and educational events.

The project will raise awareness about the climate change and its impact on forest in all age groups of locals and other people visiting the forest. We hope different events planned during the project will create a friendly communication platform for different stakeholders from institutions and general public. The conservation strategy of KPN will be better understood by locals and the community will feel more engaged and empowered in shaping its environment.
Tangible deliverables of the project: educational boards that will be placed in our community forming an educational path presenting in an accessible way impact of climate change on the Kampinos forest, publications from different stakeholders involved in the project.

Project in its different streams will strengthen active citizenship in the community in the following ways:
• Learning about different perspectives and points of view
• Respecting differences of opinions, creating fact based discussions
• Using debate to seek solutions based on facts and expert knowledge
• Formulating common goals and engaging in effective collaboration
The coexistence of forest with a capital city and the climate changes constitute the challenge and duty for local community. Social engagement that our project is aiming to create will show that cooperation between different stakeholders is possible and a local community can have its contribution to the topic of climate change in our immediate surrounding.

Mieszkańcy Razem (Community Together) association is a group of people who successfully run several local initiatives in Izabelin municipality. We are all members of the local community, issues that we want to address in our project are the issue that we face in our daily lives. As individuals we have divers professional expertise as lawyers, communication advisers, engineers, ecologists and climate activists and we are quite active in the community, running debates and local events.
We are aware of uniqueness of the forest area, which include the valuable complex of inland dunes, wetlands, natural plant communities and rich fauna. As the residents of villages adjacent to Forest we are keen on preservation of our exquisite natural environment.

• personnel and office expenses - 5000 EUR
• PR and promotion – 2000 EUR
• Classes in local school - 4000 EUR
• “Green School” run by KPN – 4000 EUR
• “Green Day for Climate” at the Izabelin Literary Festival including the prize for ecological book – 5000 EUR
• 3 debates with subject matter experts, live stream from the debate, expert fees, travel and accommodation for external experts invited to debates. – 7 500 EUR
• Workshops in the forest - 9 500 EUR

All comments from Civic Europe online community are welcomed. We are very interested in opinions of people who are engaged in similar projects addressing improving cooperation of local communities, climate change, youth involvement.