MAKE IT BLUE – Acarbio

The project: what is Make it Blue?

Make it Blue is an environmental project about the preservation and enhancement of maritime resources which aims to keep the public beaches always clean and accessible to everybody. It is a place where environmental education takes place thanks to the help provided by young international volunteers who devote their time to citizens and tourists. Every day the volunteers take care of the beach, cleaning it, going around with a special pedal boat to sweep the sea and keep the water clean, and they also organize multilingual environmental workshops for children and teenagers 6 times per week.

Where and how?

The project has been going on for four years, since 2015, every summer in the public beach of Minori, in Amalfi Coast (South Italy) and it is organized by ACARBIO in collaboration with the municipality of Minori and YAP ITALIA (Youth Action for Peace). During this project, a group of 10 young people from different countries live, eat and sleep in the public school of Minori for 2 weeks. Normally, each project hosts 4 workcamps, which means around 40 people in total. With this, young people have the opportunity to help the environment, while enjoying the Amalfi coast and experiencing Italy. Among the volunteers there are camp leaders, selected and possibly trained from YAP in organizing, guiding and connecting the group.

Daily activities and Flashmob

Our Make it Blue team is involved in cleaning the free access beaches of Minori 4 times per day, this means that they go around picking up the trash that is left by the visitors, separating it in plastic, paper, glass or mixed. The most common element that is found are the cigarette butts, which in the 2018 edition, arose to 9.000 pieces. With this situation, the volunteers prepared flashmobs to show the visitors and the inhabitants of Minori the pollution on the beaches.

In previous editions of the project, the team had a pedal boat, which was used two times per day, to catch the trash that was floating around in the water, with the help of some nets. This action helped to prevent fish and sea birds from eating plastic.

In addition to the cleaning done on the sand and in the water, the team held from 10 am to 12 pm, environmental workshop for kids, which attracted around a dozen of kids every day, who learned to identify the trash and recycle in a proper way, to name different sea animals and classify them, to know how to count or say their age in different languages, and practice their English by interactive games under the Make it Blue tent.

The importance of raising environmental awareness

With this project we are aiming to raise awareness of the situation present in thebeaches of Minori, to all the people who visit the town and the volunteers that participate in it. We hope that every year, after the project ends, there is a feeling among the participants that we have helped the planet and made people reflect on their actions. We would be delighted to see this project expanding to other parts of the world, and together make the sea blue again!