'Climate Camp' trains kids for future droughts in Hungary

As Europe continues to experience unprecedented heat and dry conditions linked to climate change, a day camp in Hungary is training disadvantaged children in how to cope with extreme weather. 

Since 2021, the Balastya Motivation School in the village of Balastya has made climate education a key part of its extra-curricular program. Students learn about climate science and practical ways people can confront the climate crisis, lessen its effects, and adapt to the changes we are already seeing. They also receive emotional education and support for growing climate anxiety.

The school has a permaculture garden, which the children tend to and eat from. It offers up practical opportunities for them to learn about how climate change will affect plants and the agriculture industry. 

"We work primarily with disadvantaged young people,"  says mentor Noeimi Erdodi. "We felt that they would be the group who would first feel the effects of climate change more severely, and we need to prepare them on some level."

The visible effects of climate change are particularly visible in Hungary. Dry grasslands and fields of dying crops. Trees turned into tinder for wildfires. 

"The field and the forest near the houses of children who attend here, and it spread to the forest. So these are very personal, very serious personal experiences," says Erdodi. 

The Danube river, Hungary's vital cultural and economic artery, has reached record lows this year as a result of drought. In Budapest cruise ships have been forced to dock upriver and sightseeing trips have been canceled. Cargo shipping has ground almost to a halt. The famous Rock of Starvation–- so-called because it only was visible over the water levels of the Danube when dry conditions disrupted mills and killed crop – has not emerged from the water, but is almost entirely visible. 

Erdodi says that the growing evidence of climate change can leave younger generations feeling anxious, powerless and frustrated. That's why, she says, "it is very important that we also include practical, action parts, so that we make them feel that they can do something."

As climate change experts foresee many more summers hotter and dryer than this to come, the skills the students of Balastya Motivation School have learnt at with Erdodi and Climate Camp will likely prove invaluable.