Ja visapkārt is one and a half year old organization, which brings together 20 youth (18 - 30 years old), who spend a part of their free time doing things which are important for them and people around.

The aim of our organization is connected with preservation of nature and culture values. Our activities are nature friendly, including cultural and social aspects.

In our opinion, being in open air is the best way how to create new ideas, find new solutions for environmental and cultural problems keeping up a tie with nature and traditions of specific area.

We have organized different kinds of projects but the main goal of activities is taking part in adventurous but at the same time educational events, like boating tours, fishing competitions, planting trees, etc.

As one of our most successful events we can mention the boating tour last summer, where we tried to observe the small dams influence on the health of the river. We combined the boating tour with the celebration of summer solstice, where we got acquainted with some Latvian traditions.
You can see pictures of boating tour "Dams of Gauja" here.

One more very successful event was a fishing competition, which title could be translated as "Searching for Loch Ness Monster". At this event we tried to understand the new fishing rules of Latvia and got information about Latvian sauna's traditions.
Pictures are available here.

To bring together our members we also organize some smaller events like common tree planting, participating in marathons and joint works to make the environment around us tidier.

We also participated in other "nature friendly thinking" NGO organized events in Poland, Germany, France, Romania etc. where we got inspiration for other projects.

The last and the most memorable event we organized was "pODU taka". It was one week long hike (about 100 km around one of the most beautiful lakes of Latvia) with a goal to explore traditions of Latvian traditional pottery. It was great opportunity to feel ourselves as a part of nature and understand how dependent we are on each other and environment around us. Pictures of hike "pOdu taka" you can see here or here.

These are only some of the projects we organized but there are still enough ideas to make real. Our enthusiastic team does everything with very big love and that's why events which we create give joy and fulfillment for us and other involved people. Our team is very open-minded for extraordinary thoughts and new ideas, which are based on nature and at the same time human friendly principles. We all want to feel the tie with the nature and give our children and grandchildren an opportunity to feel it. That is why we are doing this. And, we think, we are doing it great!

Team of Ja visapkārt
Latvia
www.javisapkart.lv