Environmental awareness and Sustainability – travelling project

Veraldarvinir, Worldwide Friends (WF), was founded in 2001 as a non-profit organization promoting nature and peace-oriented activities for volunteers wanting to spend some time in Iceland. We also send local volunteers intending to have similar experiences abroad. WF aims at promoting active participation of people and their mobility, intercultural learning and voluntary service, through non-formal educational activities. The main activities offered are workcamps, seminars, local events and exchange programs suitable both for young people and adults. WF is a non-profit organization with international scope. Our primary activity is organizing environmental-related projects where people come from different countries performing voluntary work. In organizing them, much emphasis has been put on making sure the volunteers see that their work is important, they help a community in need, or they work for the protection of the environment. In the meantime, they themselves form a community and get in close contact with locals as well as with other participants of the project from different cultures and nationalities. They find out about each other's habits and ways of life, also getting an insight of the area’s problems and its inhabitants. Brú, in the Northeast of Iceland. Worldwide Friends Iceland is opening a center of environmental and sustainability near to the crossroads to the West, South and North of Iceland. The center of the municipality “Vestra” is in the area of Hrutafjordur which is a 36 km long fjord in Hunathing. In the neighborhood you can find a lot of pure and unspoiled nature, beaches full of drifted wood, Snæfellsnes peninsula, glaciers in the highlands, waterfalls, strong rivers, canyons and craters. The purpose of the center is to protect the nature in the area and to raise the awareness of sustainability among the locals and the visitors which are coming to the area. The house is more than 1.000 m² and has 16 double rooms, two kitchens, several bathrooms and common areas, rooms for workshops and galleries. It has its own generator to produce electricity for heating and daily use. The condition of the generator is poor now and need to be fixed but we can also connect to the lines of the National power company in the meanwhile.