Volunteers to Be Engaged in Real Work

Another meeting with potential Foundation volunteers – students of the faculty of chemistry and biology of the Syktyvkar University – took place in the Silver Taiga Foundation office.

The Silver Taiga Director Yury Pautov told the future ecologists and biologists about the Foundation projects. The ecologist Nikolay Shuktomov informed them about the activities within the frameworks of these projects in which the voluntary helpers – a few volunteers who are already involved in the projects implementation – take part.

However, the main target of the meeting was an acquaintance of the Foundation employees with the potential volunteers, their interests and skills, and their motivation. They wanted to pay attention of the new volunteers wishing to join the existing ones to the fact that the Silver Taiga does not specialize on organization of mass actions (tree planting, litter removal, etc.).

Although the Foundation employees regularly participate in such annual voluntary clean-ups as “Rechnaya lenta” (River ribbon), “Mayovka”, and other similar events, professional goals and objectives of the Foundation are a bit different. The Silver Taiga Foundation projects are development projects aimed at approbation and introduction of the sustainable management of natural resources – forests, rivers, watersheds – on a designated area. Our efforts are directed at the conservation of the ecological forest values, the most precious pristine forest massifs, involvement of the local population in the management process, support of the “forest” rural settlements development, sustainable forest management training for the forest relations participants…

Accordingly, what the Foundation team expects from the volunteers is not the massiveness and one-time sounding campaigns but specific help in the implementation of these projects and other fields of activity. Our voluntary assistants take part in the field works conducted in the forest and on the river, help to organize conferences and seminars, work with the Foundation photo archive, translate English-language sources on the project topics, etc. While performing this “isolated” not always noticeable work all of them make a real contribution to the sustainable development of our region and, at the same time, obtain new knowledge and improve their professional skills.

If someone reading this information would like to take part in such work, he/she can fill out a form and send it to the following address: nshuktomov@komimodelforest.ru. After that the Silver Taiga employees will contact you to discuss the prospects for cooperation.

Valentina Semyashkina
Translated by Irina Sokolova