Students:Daniel Kurowski

About me

I'm 22 years old student originally from Brno and also living there. I study Masaryk university - my subjects are Politics and Environmental studies. I like music, discussing, doing something and being active. More about me here.

Sustainability and me

Sustainability includes quite a lot areas which we can talk about - energy, water, traffic, food, place, lifestyle etc. I'm going to write about sustainability in general. It means necessity to me. I simply think that the current "western" lifestyle can not be handled (worldwide), including all consequences such as animal extinction, nature devastation, animal misusing, political corruption, ignoring human rights, selfishness of people, working in pointless jobs etc. We can't live the same way as we do just because it can't work for longer time - politically, socially, environmentally...

Also, as I believe in God I believe that I am (we are) responsible for the land He gave us and I am obliged to take care of it. But there is also important secular reason for why we should live sustainably (if animals and nature is not reason) - because of our children. If we want to have some, we should give them a place where they can live in and bring them up in a way, that make them mentally happy. Which, I think, is not - because of described above and many others - going to happen nowadays.

Diary

Arrival day, 9th of June

After so long travelling by mini-bus we finally arrived to Lüneburg. The warm up activity was really successful because the adjective added to everyone's firstname was good hint to recall our names. Before going asleep we had interesting discussion on sustainability. It started as abstract topic and we went through many related subtopics like solar and wind energy, coal mining, politics and its impact etc.

Day 1, 10th of June

Nice guided tour in nice Lüneburg city center. The weather was nice. After great lunch we had a lecture about sustanability concept by one of professors of the university. Then two students from oikos prepared for us a workshop, where we heard somehing about student participation and then we tried to think up few problems at our schools and suggest project as a solution. Tasty dinner and free time in the evening.

Day 2, 11th of June

The most interesting information of the third day was definitely the fact, that landfill can produce energy. :-) So the visit of renewable energy power-plant and landfill was probably the best thing. Also the visit of Hamburg was impressive, especially the tunnel under Elbe river.

Day 3, 12th of June

Well yeah, the sheep and dogs taking care of them were really cool, I've never seen that before as well as real living calf. The most interesting finding of today - I'm probably too townish. Also I've learnt about interesting fish & sustainability game.

Day 4, 13th of June

In the morning we've heard idealistic green party man and then we've tried to summarize in few words, what does 'good and sustainable life' mean to us which I found quite difficult when using only few words. In the afternoon, we went to Hamburg again to see sustainable urban project which was quite interesting but still it was just one part of really sustainable life - as Aggie said - to live in sustainable houses does not mean to live sustainably. The bunker from WWII was interesting idea how we can make from ugly old object something useful.

Day 5, 14th of June

Last day of our trip we've heard some interesting ideas from innovation incubator. Then we discussed I really liked the style of discussing - like circling among three tables and disscused different topics - agriculture, energy management and green business possibilities. I liked that we've brainstormed maps of ideas which can be used, extended and realized in the future.

Final evaluation

When leaving my home I was curious what will happen. Now I can say that the trip was really great - I've learnt many new things, also many things connected together in my mind, I've visited interesting places, seen things working (like PV etc.), known new people and it gave me another impuls to do something in my city/at my school. Mostly I've enjoyed the first day when we were creating the student projects, then I really liked the excurstion to the landfill at Neu Wulmstorf and also the last day when we were brainstorming. Thanks so much to Andrew and Dana, to our guides, to EU for covering the costs and all the people who were there for making so great atmosphere.