On 28 February 2012 the Barnaul library №20 hosted
Our home is Altai youth forum. The key organizers behind the event were teachers and students of the Barnaul State Pedagogical College, heads and members of the
Taiga and Rainbow sections of the college’s student scientific circle highlighting and propounding the
Youth, Ecology and Tolerance issue.
Forum’s numerous guests, with a large group of students from the Altai State College among others, learned a lot of new interesting facts from the history of the Chuiskiy highway and its role, about Altai’s unique ribbon-like relict pine forests and their current ecological state, and watched the forum organizers’ colorful presentation devoted to the results of their environmental research expeditions to the Altaiskiy Biosphere Reserve.
The highlight of the forum was Olesya Balueva’s report devoted to the 2011 autumn volunteer event that united a group of teachers and students from the Barnaul State Pedagogical College in recovery works in famous Teletskoye Lake apple orchards in Yailu settlement – the central manor of the Altaiskiy Reserve. After the works were finished, about 100 kg of Yailu apples were handed over to Barnaul socially deprived families through social security bodies. At the end of her report Olesya thanked the staff of the Reserve and her teachers for this true value trip - the opportunity to enjoy the wonders of the Lake with its crystal clear water and the fresh wind, to participate in a range of good deeds and charitable acts which lay the basis for healthy body and soul and civic mindedness, as well as gain first charity skills so sadly and desperately lacking in our maturing society.
Issues concerning the youth subculture’s development paths and prevention of dangerously escalating youth extremism sparked heated discussions among forum participants. Nonetheless, all participants shared the conclusion that environmental background as well as healthy human relations – a distinctive feature of active tourism – can drastically reshape the mindset of the young suffering from aggressive consumption promotion and violence propaganda. Altai’s reserves and nature parks harboring pristine ecosystems, elements of indigenous people’s traditional lifestyle and all necessary resources and experience in the sphere of active youth ecotourism, offer endless horizons for these challenges.
Father Sergiy – a priest at the St. John the Evangelist Church and the forum’s honored guest – praised the young people’s achievements, their dedication and zealousness and emphasized the fact that Our Home is Altai forum-style events teach kindness, mutual understanding and environmental friendliness.
Yevgeniy D. Veselovskiy, program coordinator for the Teletskaya school of youth ecotourism “Guardians of the Lake” of the Altaiskiy Biosphere Reserve.
Information source – I.A. Volkova and N.A. Platonova’s forum materials.