Together 42 young people traveled to Greenland from 6 countries – Latvia, Denmark, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Slovakia, and Romania and explored Greenlandic culture, environment, and its raw and pure nature. Through non-formal education methods, we learned from each other, mother nature and understood that ‘sharing and caring’ is one of the most important free assets to connect the world as one. The project has been funded with the support of the Erasmus+ program of the European Union.

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"Greenland is the largest island in the world, with approximately 80% of its surface covered with ice. Thanks to the #BackToGreenLand project we had the opportunity to visit the city of Kangerlussuaq, get to know its surroundings, the local community and culture. We also had the opportunity to see how climate change is changing the lives of people who cannot influence it at all. Greenland is larger than France, Germany, Spain, Britain, Italy, Greece, Switzerland and Belgium combined, but only 58,000 people lives there, in the city we visited only 500, it´s the world's most sparsely populated country. At the same time, it´s one of the most beautiful, you can see there real virgin nature, many lakes, mountains, aurora, arctic desert and despite the extreme temperature fluctuations many animals lives there. There is also one of the most active glacier in the world, registered in the UNESCO book as a protected natural heritage. Unfortunately, Greenland has lost about half of this glacier over the past 8 years, and no more have been gained since 1998. For comparison today's amount of ice could be a supply of approximately 7% of drinking water worldwide. On the way to the glacier, the local people showed us places that were covered with ice about 15 years ago. It took us almost an hour by bus to get to the place where the glacier begins today.

In a few years, the locals lost not only the glacier and snow, but also the water in the rivers, which provided food and transport. Today, you can see just dry troughs full of sand instead of water. There are no roads between cities due to the mountains, the ice tongues and the many wide and deep fjords. The most common way of transport is by plane, but flights are very expensive, so only a few of local people can afford them. Another option is to use a snowmobile or dogsledding, but its´ almost no longer used due to lack of snow in a populated part of the country. The majority of the population is therefore isolated in their settlements and relies on the importation of ordinary goods, as they can grow almost nothing under these conditions. The basis of their diet is meat, since to catch an animal is the most affordable and they can sell or use a leather for warm clothes as well.

The people here live in communities, cut off from the rest of the world, living their traditional lives, but they have been experiencing the greatest change in their environment in the last decades. The main sources of finance are fishing, the Danish government and tourism in recent years, but money cannot mitigate climate change, return water to the rivers or change the weather. The Greenland government is investing a large amount of money in renewable sources for energies and children's education, which we could see on our own at school visits and discussions with the principal. Unfortunately, they do not have enough resources to build waste disposal facilities in towns, they have it only in 6 larger cities. In others the waste is incinerated in landfills, with all the fumes going into the air and the garbage is often blown kilometers away. They want to change it and we should help them.

People in Greenland haven´t chosen where and how to live, they haven´t chosen profit before the prosperity of our planet, but they have been influenced into account the global behavior of people on the rest of the world. Where is global warming and the climate crisis more evident? Now, it´s the time to think about our way of life and try to change it to more sustainable, otherwise we will destroy the lives of innocents and sooner or later it will catch up with us too. Nature doesn´t need people, people need nature.

Thanks to the school visit and interviews with the locals, we were able to observe, in addition to environmental problems, also social ones, which stem mainly from culture. Alcoholism, the cold, dark, lack of jobs, economic failures and loss of some traditional practices has led to widespread depression and suicide. One 22 year old man told that he knew 38 people who had committed suicide this year.

They try to support children especially in the school, which is a shelter for them, they can spend time after school till evening and also on weekends, they have there a lot of games, computers, kitchen and creative workshops, but sometimes it is not enough. Therefore, we should also talk about these issues openly in our country and put pressure on the authorities that can help them in these matters.

This trip left more than just a good impression on me, I left Greenland with a feeling that I want to come back there, but it's not just because I liked this country so much, nor because I feel responsibility for actions of people, but mainly because I want to be a part of a tool for a change and help for locals. I hope it´ll come in some time and I´ll be carefree enjoying life and Danish hygge, somewhere near beautiful Greenland nature, peace and quiet..."