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Cleaning-up Serbia: Designing and Delivering a Public Campaign with over 200,000 volunteers

Change Management

As part of the initiative, “Spring Cleaning of Serbia” days were organised on 4 June in 2010 and 2011. This date was chosen to celebrate World Environment Day. All citizens in Serbia were encouraged to come along to the clean-up day to do their bit for the environment.

The “Clean Serbia” project team engaged around 25 volunteers to assist with the campaign to prepare for the days. The volunteers were young people who were looking for some work experience to improve their employability. They were appointed for a two-three month period before the actual clean-up day and given responsibility on establishing direct contacts with all local authorities to help them organise the clean-up day and to build their capacity to clean up illegal dumps and fly-tipping.

In 2011, the volunteer team included 17 women and 6 men, all aged about 25. They were selected through an open competition and were naturally excited to get the chance of work experience in such a challenging and interesting project. With their enthusiasm, they brought imagination and momentum to the project.


The initiative received strong support in the media. The national public broadcasting company, radio and television of Serbia allocated free slots for campaign videos. Local television stations followed this lead. The campaign was also supported by a number of business and nonprofit organisations. Most significantly, the project was also backed by popular Serbian celebrities – e.g. in 2011 the main promoter of the campaign was Novak Djoković, the number one tennis player in the world and now a superstar and national hero. This support helped a lot to make the campaign highly successful.

The campaign tried to both educate and inspire citizens to participate. They could register through either the “Clean Serbia’ central website, by phone or by direct contact with the local authority. The local authorities were responsible for contacting the volunteers and telling them about the sites where the clean-up would take place.

For the 2011 event, citizens themselves were also able to identify sites that bothered them in their local environment - they could make a suggestion by sending in the details of the site they proposed for cleaning - this direct citizen involvement in preparing the local clean-ups also made a big contribution to its success.

The clean-up day brought together a large number of volunteers of a wide range of ages and backgrounds – e.g. students from primary and secondary schools, university students, public and private sector employees, pensioners and so on. In 2010 “Spring Cleaning of Serbia” mobilised about 209,000 volunteers which rose to 289,000 in 2011 - 4 % of Serbia’s total population. Indeed, in 18 out of 168 municipalities which participated in 2011 over 10 percent of the local population turned out. This scale of volunteering would be remarkable in any Western European country (for example if 4% of the UK's population volunteered in such a scheme there would be over 2.4 million participants). This level of participation is even more remarkable in a country which has no culture of volunteering.

The clean-up day started around 9 am and lasted until late afternoon. Typically, the day ended with a party or similar celebration, organised (and financed) by the local authority, as they considered appropriate, e.g. barbecues, concerts or other cultural events.

In addition, the “Clean Serbia” campaign provided around 40,000 bins for the separation and collection of waste paper. Half of these waste paper bins were placed in public agencies and the other half was provided to private companies. This sought to change people’s behaviour by making people more conscious of the need to separate waste for recycling (click here to read more about behaviour change).

It is planned that 30 recycling centers in Serbian cities and towns will open by the end of 2011. For the construction of these facilities 650 million Serbian Dinars (around €6.5 million or £5.6 million) are being allocated. Four of the recycling centers will be financed through the “Clean Serbia” campaign.

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About this case study
Main Contact

Milos Panjkovic

Ministry of Environmental Protection, Mining and Spatial Planning

Email:

milos.panjkovic@ekoplan.gov.rs

 

 

Aleksandra Rabrenovic wrote this case study for Governance International on 14 October 2011

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