The US Ambassador in Greece H.E.Daniel Smith, his wife Diane, Yanna Pavlopoulou and Peggy Papastavrou
Clean-up Action last Sunday the 14th of April 2013
The Volunteer supporters of the nationwide Cleanup Campaign “Let’s Do It Greece” http://www. letsdoitgreece.org/ with their friends & families joined this great environmental initiative in 300 spots in any part of Greece on Sunday, April 14, 2013 at 10:00 p.m.! ‘Let’s Do It’ (http://www.letsdoitworld.org/) is a global, non-profit Clean-Up campaign of self-motivated volunteers, that runs in 96 countries mainly through social media. It’s the fastest growing environmental initiative, having started in Estonia in 2008 but gained 7.000.000 volunteers by 2012 globally, mainly teenagers. In Greece around 600 organizations and volunteer groups, participated this year to showcase the value of the authentic spontaneous volunteerism at individual, group or company level, as the positive and creative side of Greece!
Volunteers were informed by their associations about the event and through www.letsdoitgreece.org website, which had maps of all parts of Greece with pins and exact cleanup site directions, continuously enriched with details, new entries and a photo gallery soon (due to the workload it’s only in Greek ). Letsdoitgreece had the full support of 10 Prefectures, 158 Municipalities, many schools, associations and companies in a cleanup that ranges from forests to caves, from parks to urban areas, from submarine areas (with scuba divers) to rivers and beaches. As a “ZERO BUDGET” campaign, it addresses to self-organization of individually motivated volunteers. We freely provided our Logos to be used for banners, t-shirts, signs etc. Major environmental associations participated in this initiative eg. HELMEPA, ARKTOUROS, ELLADA KATHARI, YDRONAFTES etc.
What a gathering!
Yanna Pavlopoulou (Commonlawgic) organized the event in Glyfada (4th Marina) which was under the auspices of International PROPELLER Club (Port of Piraeus), the Hellenic Stock Exchange (HELEX), the Hellenic Management Association and the American Hellenic Chamber of Commerce.
Daniel Smith, the U.S. Ambassador in Greece, attended and gladly served the cleanup efforts together with his wife, colleagues and friends. They seemed to enjoy the seaside and spent 2 full hours with volunteers, scouts teams and high school students from Glyfada, students from BYRON College (comprised of 32 nationalities) and U.S. Alumni from Michigan and Georgetown.
Yanna Pavlopoulou together with the representative for Southern Europe and North Africa advised the participants over the mission and vision of “Let’sDoit” in Greece and globally.
PARAGON SHIPPING provided volunteers with t-shirts and undertook some printouts with “Letsdoitgreece” signs. Only sponsorships in kind were accepted anyway. We are still in the beginning, but a huge wave of spontaneous volunteerism seems to emerge in Greece similarly to many parts of the world.
We Did It… Let’s continue & Clean up Greece!!!
