“We want Ukrainian forests to have a future,” says Sofiia, the Head of the Floral by Petriv civil society organization. “That’s why we must act now to address the problem of forest pollution.”

Sofiia is an eco-activist and a student at the Lviv State University of Internal Affairs where she studies law. In June 2022, with other classmates, she won IFES’ DemVision competition of student action projects with a focus on greening Ukrainian forests.

This year, with an impressive number of 792 votes, she won the nomination of Volunteering Initiatives in the Golden Flipchart contest of civic initiatives which aims to speed Ukraine’s victory over Russia’s invasion. With other students, Sofiia regularly organizes initiatives to clean forests and plant trees in the Lviv region. She visits schools to speak with children about climate change, forests and local eco-initiatives.

“There is an acute need to take care of our forests and environment in general,” shares Sofiia. “We decided to launch our eco-initiative to raise awareness of this problem and encourage youth to join our efforts. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine aggravates this problem even more. Rockets and continuous shelling cause fires all over Ukrainian territory and destroy Ukrainian forests. Because of war, a lot of Ukrainian forests are mined.”

IFES’ Democracy: From Theory to Practice civic education course inspired Sofiia to engage in eco-activism and equipped her with knowledge and skills necessary to design and implement a student action project. During this university-level course, all students work in groups to plan and administer a volunteer initiative. Some students apply to the DemVision contest where winners can receive resource support from IFES.

“I now realize that without winning DemVision and without continuous support from IFES’ civic education team, I would probably not lead this eco-project now,” noted Sofiia. “The most important thing is to believe in yourself.”

In just one year, Sofiia’s project has yielded impactful results and is popular among youth. “We now see an immense impact on our society,” she says. “We’re often invited to give lectures at schools and universities and explain to students that our future largely depends on clean forests. We now see that they became more motivated and want to join our eco-initiative to help save our environment. They plant trees and clean forests together with us.”

The team sets ambitious goals and in the upcoming year plans to continue expanding the project.

“Every day our project gets more and more noticed. Before DemVision, we planted only 100 trees in total,” recalls Sofiia. “When we applied for the contest, we didn’t have any expectations and our goal was to plant 1,000 trees. Eventually, we managed to plant twice as many – 2,000 trees. We think it’s an incredible result!”

As Sofiia chairs the Flora by Petriv civil society organization, she noted that Ukraine lacks eco-projects; therefore, her organization works to promote eco-activism in Ukraine. “It is quite difficult to engage in any eco-initiatives and find information about forest cleaning as very few organizations in Ukraine invite people to do it. That is how I came up with the idea to establish my own organization to engage more people, particularly students, in cleaning our forests,” she added.

Discussing the future, Sofiia sees her young project growing into a large-scale eco-movement throughout Ukraine. “When I won DemVision, I realized that I want my future to be associated with eco-activism. Now, when I continue my studies, I have an opportunity to engage more and more students in eco-activism through my networks and in the future I see it as a large-scale eco-movement in our country.”

To date, over 12,000 students at over 60 universities and vocational colleges have successfully completed IFES’ civic education course. The course curriculum introduces students to fundamental concepts of democratic citizenship, systems of government, civic participation, and human rights, while deepening soft and hard skills through hands-on, real-world learning experiences.