Flourishing Generations – I
Youth Solidarity Tree Project. Ten youngsters from the Netherlands have collected money to donate and to plant more than 150 trees on ‘The Netherlands – Türkiye Friendship Forest’, together with their local peers in Marmaris.
With a strong sense of collective responsibility, junior rangers, young arborists, students from WUR’s faculty of forestry, and many other dedicated youngsters joined forces during the 4-day summit in Marmaris. They have worked on some brilliant solutions to prevent and mitigate wildfires, within their newly forged friendship. They have done cleaning up activities, co-created an eco-artistic vision of the future, connected with trees through cardio electromagnetic communication and planted trees on Türkiye’s national tree planting day.
It is one of NP2E’s pillars to encourage women’s and youth’s role in the conservation of natural resources, promotion of the environment and the protection of all living beings. As a Dutch-based organisation, we found it essential to implement a youth solidarity tree project between the Netherlands and Türkiye for the purpose of contributing to the recovery of the areas affected by the wildfires in Marmaris.
The project’s title ‘Flourishing Generations’ refers to both young trees and young people. It demands resilience from young trees to grow and flourish after the forest fires, just like it does from young humans to recover from the impact of the lockdowns, social distancing and media-driven polarisation.
We have also included an intercultural component in this solidarity project. For more than 400 years the Netherlands and Türkiye have been engaged in (diplomatic) relations. Besides, people with a Turkish background are the largest groups (in terms of nationality) living in The Netherlands after the native Dutch. And yet, the two still don’t know much about each other and the things that bond them. One might be surprised though, how nature does find a way to unite.
It has been a great joy to see the youngsters truly connect with each other and with nature in Marmaris and watch them co-create an eco-artistic vision of their future. May their commitments be rooted strongly in the vision they together have developed, like a Sweetgum tree is rooted in soil and the light of their friendship flourish and expand like that of a Lime tree, and may it inspire many others to join them in their collaborate mission.
