The Earth Charter Affiliate in Czech Republic, the Municipal Library in the town of Sedlchany, which celebrated its 125th anniversary in 2007, has always played a key role in promoting culture and education in the town and serving as a community center. The Earth Charter was chosen as an ethical framework for their educational and community projects for the 2009-2010 academic year.
In the first week of March 2010 the organizing team of community educational project Luká??ek met to discuss the celebration of the International Earth Day on April 22 and its connection to the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Earth Charter launch in 2000. It was decided that the activities would open with a programme about the Earth Charter for school kids on the local square during their school day. Usually the Earth Day activities are followed by an exhibition of the art work in the library, and this year there will be an exhibition celebrating the Earth Charter. Given that the Earth Charter text addresses major challenges of the modern unsustainable lifestyle and production, the organizing team of Luká??ek project has already decided to extend the use of the Earth Charter framework for their educational and community activities in the next academic year of 2010 – 2011.
The translated Earth Charter materials: Mission, Vision, Goals, Action Guidelines, and others will be used in the educational projects. The collaborating organizations intend to use the Earth Charter through educational processes planned throughout the year in local schools.. Besides the Sedlchany schools, the kindergartens are also included into their Earth Charter projects.
Honouring one of the Earth Charter pillars, “Respect and Care for the Community of Life”, the municipal library and the community center have also launched an intergenerational project to bring together citizens living in a local senior home and elementary schools students, so that the children could benefit from the traditional values which older generation can pass to youngsters. The young people are engaged in rendering necessary assistance and, sometimes, just a companionship for the elders, who might feel their disconnectedness from the active community life.
The Municipal Art School has already started the project by creating a ceramic “Memorial to Earth”, which will be built in the garden of the school on 27 October, and the memorial will be exhibited for the whole period of Luká??ek project. The organisers also use songs by Carolyn McDade who composed inspired on the Earth Charter text, some of them they have already translated into Czech. There is also going to be a press conference of the Municipal Library, and the Earth Charter ethical framework for the community projects will be introduced there too.
The Earth Charter Affiliates have recently created the Czech EC website (http://chartazeme.cz) which they actively use for promoting Earth Charter values in their country.