Beach cleanup in Alexandria. Volunteers from the spot. The whole trip was partly sponsored by Anna Lindh foundation!
We laughed, learnt and thought, made connections and new relations. We were exhausted by the end of it, saddened to see each other go, and yet happy to have met. There in Alexandria, the second most populous city in Egypt, between the 7th and 12th of October, met 27 people from almost every country bordering the Mediterranean Sea.
A lot of brainstorming lead to many crucial ideas about how the organisation should be build up. On the chart you can see the draft for the core team.
We had six days in Alexandria. Three of those were the planning seminar, focused on arranging the organization of the Mediterranean cleanup, as well as preparing the material for the next three days. Workshops were prepared by small groups, and focused on essential parts of organizing a national and regional cleanup campaign. The participants were trained in an enjoyable, relaxed atmosphere, with cultural trips, sea-side excursions and even a beach cleanup organised within a few days.
Let’s Do It Mediterranean brings together nations, languages and religions but most importantly – people!
In a strange way, laughter, fatigue, insight and networking were the pinnacle moments of the seminar. However, contrary to what the reader might think, the fatigue was not due to meeting so many new faces all at once. Neither was it due to all the knowledge, compressed and ferried among new found colleagues. It was due to the having such comfortable dialogue, such mutual sense of purpose, and such satisfaction of doing, what deep down we all know needs to be done. My cheeks were still sore days after I got back home, ready to put my country on a waste map, with the intent that in a few months’ time, it would be removed.
Author: Faisal
