Trans Caucus Environmental Initiative

This is a letter from a fellow PCV in Georgia who wants to collaborate with other Caucus contries on projects. The initiative is very new, so if you are interested, have ideas, or want to hear ideas, feel free to contact Julien:

Dear fellow PCV's,

Thank you for your rapid responses! Even though this idea is in its very beginning stages, the interest level and excitement in your emails shows that this will hopefully be a fantastic opportunity for all of us in the region. All three countries are active in environmental projects on some level, but all are at different points in their program developments. For example, I believe that PC Armenia has had the longest running environmental program, and PC Azerbaijan has begun activities within the last 2 years. We here in Georgia have been active since 2003, but are currently designing a new 3-year plan for our Eco-Project.

There are opportunities for cooperation on many levels, and I'd like to see what issues you would like to see discussed, as well as your ideas for the size and scope of this possible cooperation. To this end, I've thrown together a rapid survey for you to complete. Feel free to include whatever information you think would be helpful for the group (past or current project descriptions, photos, active NGOs, report links, etc.) for all of us to become better educated with the collective state of the environment in the Southern Caucuses.

I've gotten us started by creating a Google Group, where we will hopefully be able to easily communicate (when some of us get Internet opportunities!) This group can be found here:

http://groups.google.com/group/southcaucasuseco

As a disclaimer, I hasten to add that I'm not too experienced with Google Groups, so if you run into any problems, just shoot me an email, and we'll try to figure it out together. I've started us off by uploading a poster that I think you might find helpful/interesting, and I'm exited to learn more about the region from all of you.

Attached, you'll find the aforementioned survey, so please take some time and fill it out. You can just send me (julien.katchinoff@gmail.com) the completed surveys, and I'll compile the information for all to see in a couple weeks. We here in Georgia have a tentative Eco-Meeting on the 22nd, so at the risk of seeming to boss the other countries around, if those could be returned by the 15th of March, we would greatly appreciate it. :)


Keep warm at site, and thanks for your help,


Julien