The history of our association

The Youth Conservationist Association of Hajdúböszörmény was called to life by the democratic changes in society and the pretension for environmental awareness in 1991. In the same year the association was founded by a team consisting of mainly teachers and committed, environmentally conscious and enthusiastic youngsters.

The association is managed and superintended by a five member board that generally has sessions in every three months. The activities of the association are supervised financially and in view of legitimacy by a three member control committee. In the past ten years nearly 150 people have joined us, and the number of those who participated in our programs must be put at several thousands. We keep in touch with our members through the means of an information leaflet called Hírlevél as well that appears at certain periods of time.

We have managed to set off towards institution integrations by the help of the Partnership Program of the Budapest based Autonómia Foundation. We acquired our present head office in 1998 on the second floor of an office block in the downtown of Hajdúböszörmény. We have four full time employees in the office who work on the programs and the administrative tasks of the association.

In 1994 we were searching for a permanent camping place and at a village called Bodrogolaszi we found a proper and seemly peasant house that we bought in the same year. During the following years we managed to renovate the building and make it suitable for accommodating smaller groups of campers. In 2001 we succeeded in buying two more adjoining sites which requires more efforts, more work and even more sacrifices but now we can prospect the image of a spacious and decent youth camp at the bank of the River Bodrog...

Some of our achievements that we feel are worth mentioning:

• in 1994 on the municipal elections our organization gained a mandate on the list, this way Csóka Imre could be a board member in the local authority for four years;
• in 1995 we were awarded the title Organization of the Year by Ökotárs Foundation at Besztercebánya (Banska Bistrica), Slovakia;
• in 1999 our association was the host organization of a venue called National Meeting of Environmentalist Organizations (Környezet- és Természetvédő Szervezetek Országos Találkozója), more than 500 people participated at the meeting, among them there were several members of the Hungarian Parliament;
• due to these meetings our member, Köszörűs Zoltán was able to represent the national green peace movement in the board of the Hungarian State Radio.