SciFest® is a yearly international festival which brings together thousands of schoolkids, high school students, and teachers to discover new experiences and learn about science, technology and the environment. It takes place every year one weekend in spring in Joensuu (Finland). This year, it was held the 11th and 12th of May and the Finnish SECURE team took part in it.
This festival is free and open to everyone and it usually offers different workshops during the event. The last edition has included a workshop under 'The roadmap towards oil-free and carbon neutral North Karelia' initiative, composed by series of events around the region to share knowledge and expertise to achieve an oil free region.
Through this workshop, our SECURE Finnish partners and the rest of the agents involved collected different ideas, such as, “how living will look like in North-Karelia in 2040?” Attendants discussed around the type of food, the public transports and the different ways they could have in the future to get energy.
Generating energy
The workshop became a good excuse to do some exercise as well. They put an electric bicycle and all the attendants that rode the bike, could generate energy and see how different machines worked with their effort, such as, a radio playing some songs, recharging their smartphones or switching the light on in two lamps.
Apart from that, they ran a competition using the YouTube social media platform. In that way, participants that filmed their idea got the chance to win a solar battery/cell charger for their mobile phone.
Around 700 people visited towards oil-free and carbon neutral workshop during the festival. These attendants provided hundreds of ideas and suggestions as well, from school kids to adults. For example, they visualize North Karelia region with the following ideas: "we´ll move with flying cars, we can teleportation and we use banana peels as a fuel".