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Children’s
comics against floods,
books for clean rivers
What happened?
A low pressure area named “Yvette” or “Tamara” caused flooding in the Balkans area between 14th and 16th of May 2014. The rainfall in Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina was the heaviest in the 120 years of meteorological records. Rains, torrents and mudslides raised water levels, which led to the flooding of the surrounding lowlands. The flooding waters caused 2,000 landslides throughout the southeast of Europe. Over 2 million people were indirectly affected by the 2014 floods. Thousands of animals were left underwater. The flora was covered in mud for months.
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The floods were caused by nature. The consequent damages were largely the fault of authorities and people. Lack of funds means there are practically no preventative measures carried out. The levees weakened by gravel excavation are old 50 years and upwards. The riverbeds and drainage and flood control canals are not cleaned regularly. The population throws different kinds of waste into the canals and rivers: plastic bottles, bags, paper, glass, food and hygienic product leftovers. We are directly endangering our life and environment, polluting water, soil and air. Floating garbage islands are created, then dispersed throughout the planet by flooding rivers.
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What are we going to do about it?
The Waters of Balkans Project aims to publish a book featuring children’s comics on the topic of the floods created in workshops in the towns of Gunja (Republic of Croatia), Obrenovac (Republic of Serbia) and Maglaj and Doboj (Bosnia and Herzegovina) during 2015.
The book also features honest stories about life during the floods, photographs of the damages caused by the floods and photographs of the polluted rivers’ beds.
The 156-page A4 size book in colour, in the three countries’ languages and with English translation, will be passed out to children and youth in the aforementioned towns in exchange for 5 used plastic bottles (PET packing) or 5 pieces of PE-LD packing (flexible bottles, bread and frozen food bags,…).
The primary goal is to gradually build the consciousness among the children and youth to stop throwing waste into the rivers and in that way act preventatively against flood damages.
Our organised workshops helped the children to free themselves from trauma and fears of floods in a creative manner, by gathering waste we give them an opportunity to teach us adults to respect nature.
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How can you contribute?
The total planned budget to carry out the project is USD 4,000 out of which USD 3,000 we plan to get through crowdsourcing on the Indiegogo crowdfunding platform. The collected funds will be spent on printing 1500 books that we will pass out to children in the four aforementioned towns in exchange for plastic waste.
All additional collected funds will be invested in printing of further copies, promotions, exhibitions and collecting plastic packaging in a series of towns lying by the bed of Bosna, then rivers Morava, Sava and others. The project would be conducted for years with the goal to raise the ecological awareness of the people of this area and elsewhere as much as possible. Clean rivers mean life, for us and for the generations to come.
Projects stages
Balkan Waters projects will be implemented in several stages. First we will hand in the books in return for waste at locations where we did the comic workshops. After that, the initiative will expand to river Bosnia, Morava and Sava.
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We got some goodies for you!
Balkan Waters Comic Book Preview
Association of Comic Fans StripOs Osijek, founded in 2009 with the main goal of preserving comic heritage and foster creative endeavours of children and youth. The idea of creating a regional humanitarian-ecological project to encompass the areas of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia struck with the 2014 floods was born while arranging Children’s Comic Festival in Gunja in 2015.
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