Hello, my name is Anja and I come from a small village Borovnica, Slovenia. I am a European Solidarity Corps volunteer with Association Biom. Currently I am based on island Lastovo with 3 others ESC volunteers. We are helping in LIFE Artina project.
I grew up on a farm, which was quite a challenging experience. I developed an appreciation for the land and a connection to nature. It has always been important to me to learn about the ways of how to preserve nature. In my opinion, fieldwork and educating people are the best tool to do so.
I transformed my love for nature into my studies. For this reason, I graduated in the Nature Protection and later in Environmental Protection. In the time of both studies, I took opportunities and did my traineeship abroad through Erasmus+ Programme. It helped me gain experiences and deepen my knowledge about nature protection. During my Nature protection studies, I spent two months in Split at Javna ustanova za upravljanje Park-šumom Marjan. Besides learning a new language, this experience also gave me an insight into managing protected areas. While I was studying Environmental Protection, I did my traineeship at the Scottish Wildlife Trust. Their main task is maintaining and protecting nature reserves. My work was mostly outdoors: from footpath repair to removing scrub vegetation.
Since I love working outside, I applied for Island Birds project. Other reason was to gain some experience in fieldwork. I also want to improve my Croatian and develop communication skills. During our project I wish to raise public awereness of the importance about nature conservation and sustainable development in local communities.
Anja is a participant of the Island Birds project implemented by the Association Biom as part of the European Solidarity Corps program.