We made it!!!
Saturday, 23rd of June was maybe even the most important day of our project, it was D-day to present our work. We worked a lot in past two weeks, we had some difficulties and changes in the process, but our main objective stayed the same – make a proper boat out of plastic bottles.
The event was set in front of Nautical club of Kalamata: The whole process from collecting bottles to the final result (optimist boat) was presented at four stations. At every station, EVS volunteers were making demonstrations so that visitors were able to get familiar with the procedure and try it out themselves. During the event, I had pleasure to talk to important people who organized this entire project. Read what they have said below.
Hamid Perseas Roshangar, R.A.D.I.Kal.A.: I am very satisfied with the feedback and help we got from volunteers who came from all over the Europe to do this crazy, but innovative project. I think the highlight was when we have put the boat in the sea with this young captain who is good sailor and we had good wind. We will show it to experts, boat makers to get technical feedback to improve the entire project. We will communicate with educational system, especially our main sponsor- Bougas school in order to increase environmental awareness. Plan is to use plastic flakes which are products of shredding by bicycle, as well. Also, we are having discussions with refugee center in Athens to employee refugees and unemployed people to help sorting out plastics. Another thing is designing a machine which uses olive pits as heating material with no usage of electricity and fuel, to melt plastic into different shapes. Our main objective is to decrease usage of single use plastics. In the end, I just want to say thank you to our beautiful volunteers.
Margarita and Dimitri Papatheodorou, Olympia Hellas: We think this project is very interesting, new and a good start to navigate Greeks to recycle more. We are excited to see the boat in the sea and we believe in this idea of recycling.
Dimitris Kakalikas, Nautical club of Kalamata: I am in this club as a volunteer since 1984 so I like volunteering, especially when it includes kids. I am against plastic pollution and I think this project will help fighting it. The boat is not like regular boats but still, it is a boat.
Antonis Tsolkas, Messinian Boats: I found this project very innovative and I haven’t seen something similar in the making so I thought it would be challenging even for me. I am absolutely satisfied with the result. Not that we know the procedure, we know it could take less time to make it and be more careful when applying the material in the mold. I am sure projects like this are helping to think more about problem of plastic garbage. I talked with Hamid and we will definitely continue working on it now when we proved that it flows. In the end, I want to thank all volunteers from Erasmus+ who came here, without their help it wouldn’t be able to do this.
Filateros Vourkos, K.A.NE. : The result is amazing and even more amazing the fact that 15 people who have never done something like this before, made fully functional boat out of plastic. The whole process was challenging but it exceeded the expectations. Even though there is always place for improvements, team worked as a team and it is important. We showed that the remaining plastic on the planet could be used in a creative way. I am very happy that it all worked out with all these amazing people who were involved and I believe that the fact that we managed to combine it with EVS project and 15 people had an opportunity to experiment with something completely different and also went through learning experience, it is a reason why we made this organization.
Anna Charalampous, R.A.D.I.Kal.A.: I think this is huge success because this was our dream and it is an experiment, we haven’t done this before but we built out boat and it went smoothly in the sea. Great success is that everyone came together, the Erasmus+ volunteers, all our sponsors and everyone else, believing in this idea. I cannot stress enough how very grateful we are to everyone who helped us in this project. The D.R.E.A.M. came true.
I believe that everyone who has been involved in this project, has to be proud of what we have achieved all together and how it turned out. Of course, there is space for improvement, but our first boat, Piratiki, came out just fine and functional.