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The contest “Our Little Hike 2017”, which is organised by the Ministry of Agriculture in collaboration with the JSC “Latvijas valsts meži” and the association “Zaļās mājas”, awarded the most active youth of Latvian schools on the 10 November in the award ceremony in the LVM Nature Park in Tērvete.

This year’s slogan was – “In the land of forests, in Latvia!”. In the contest participants – students from Latvian general and professional educational institutions, and also from interest-related hobby groups and rural youth organisations – researched literature, went on an excursion and prepared a creative research work about timber “ways” to products in Latvia and abroad.

More than 200 students from state’s educational institutions came to the award ceremony in one of the most popular nature destination of Latvia. Participants were greeted by Ēriks Hānbergs – the chairman of jurors, writer and publicist, Rigonlds Arnītis – the Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture and Māra Mīkule – representative of Forest Department of Ministry of Agriculture, Inese Liepiņa – senior expert of the National Centre for Education, and also Ieva Erele – assistant of CEO of Latvian Forest Industry Federation, all of whom praised the persistence and curiosity of participants.

“Our Little Hike” award ceremony in LVM Nature Park in Tērvete

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After the award ceremony, children went into the trails of Nature Park in Tērvete where they combined recreation with educational tasks. Children met the fighter for clean forests – the Pigman, found out how many kilograms of CO₂  has been stored in the broom of the Forest Witch of the Fairytale Forest, built a functioning wooden bridge from planks without using nails and hammer, and did many more exciting tasks.

This year the contest for students of Latvian schools took place for the eleventh time. The contest received 86 works. The participation in contest contributed to the understanding of the diverse treasures of forest, also about the climate change in Latvia and in the world and about the contribution of forest industry in reducing the climate changes.