The first in a series of afforestation actions, which are part of the largest volunteer campaign for the afforestation of the fire-devastated areas of Dalmatia, has been completed over the weekend.  The Scout Association of Croatia, the main organizers of the Boranka campaign, gathered over 300 volunteers from all parts of Croatia on the Mosor mountain (near Split) which was devastated by last year's fires. 

The volunteers planted and watered over 3000 seedlings and plan to plant more than 20,000 new ones in weekends to come.  The planting actions will be organized every weekend for the next two months and include more than 2500 volunteers from numerous associations, institutions and companies.

As part of the project, education for elementary school students has also started.  Experts from the Scout Association, the State Protection and Rescue Directorate, the Croatian Mountain Rescue Service and the firefighters are educating children on the basics of fire and nature protection, afforestation actions and importance of forests.  The children involved in education activities will also be able to participate in afforestation actions.

The campaign is envisagedin a way that the trees burned down in summer wildfires are used to make a black ash. The ash is used as a one-of-a-kind ingredient in producing crayons called Boralice.
During September 2018 over 100,000 boralice crayons were given away free of charge to citizens, schools and kindergartens in all of Croatia. By using boralice crayons, users can draw their very own tree, take a photo and upload it to the website www.boranka.hr. By doing so, they take part in creating a virtual forest. The more the virtual forest grows, the more real seedlings are planted by Scouts and other volunteers in the wildfire sites.
This way the burnt black charcoal is symbolically utilised to make a new tree and return the green color to blackened wildfire sites. That’s the beauty of Boranka, the only coloring book that brings life back to wildfire sites.

The visual identity and the communication campaign for this project is designed by agency Imago Ogilvy and the website was designed by agency Degordian. The media sponsorship is provided by 24sata.

‘When you have an excellent project, a great team and good creative energy at hand, then anything is possible… even turning black charcoal into a green tree. This is one of the most useful and creative campaigns I have ever worked on.’ – Igor Mladinović, chief creative director at Imago Ogilvy points out.

‘This campaign provides us with an opportunity to include thousands of volunteers in the planting action with many of them planting a real tree for the very first time. Nature conservation and these afforestation actions come naturally to us scouts because we know that once you plant a tree yourself, you will treat nature and the environment better. I am glad that a truly remarkable number of partners and sponsors recognized this project’s value and that this is set to be one of biggest volunteer campaigns in Croatia’s history.’ – Dan Špicer, business manager of the Scout Association of Croatia, said.

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