Key Project Details
"Cut greed, not trees" Youth Exchange took place from 24 March to 1 April 2026 in Bagaciu, Mures County, Romania. The mobility brought together 36 participants, supported by group leaders and facilitators from Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland.
The project was coordinated by Asociatia Cloud Five (Romania) in partnership with:
Nemformális Csoport Kalandoor (Hungary)
Informal Group Trailblazers (Slovakia)
Stowarzyszenie Inicjatyw Społecznych "Dobry Dzień" (Poland)
Objectives and Activities
The main goal of "Cut greed, not trees" was to raise awareness of deforestation and illegal logging in the area of the Carpathian Garden among 36 young people aged 18–23 from Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland, and to give them the tools to act on what they learned.
Our project had three specific objectives:
· Objective 1: Develop the participants' awareness of deforestation and its devastating effects on the environment, by exploring the phenomenon from its root causes to its consequences on our daily lives.
· Objective 2: Familiarise the participants with the importance of conservation, with an emphasis on the fact that natural resources are exhaustible.
· Objective 3: Empower the participants to develop their active citizenship competences, while learning how to recognise instances of illegal logging.
Over the course of 9 days, the participants engaged in a programme built on non-formal education and hands-on learning, moving from understanding the problem to doing something about it. The youth exchange was divided into three main phases:
Phase 1 (Days 1–2): The first days were designed for the group to get to know each other and to become familiar with the programme, the schedule and the objectives. Participants co-created a Social Contract, explored the Erasmus+ programme and Youthpass through interactive group work, and took part in a session on risks and prevention. They also set up the project committees, party, social media and secret friend, through which they took on real responsibilities for the days ahead. The first activity on the topic itself, "What's the Value of a Tree?", opened the subject with a simple question: what do trees actually do for us?
Phase 2 (Days 3–7): This was the core of the exchange. Through a quiz on the real scale of deforestation, participants found out how much of it goes unreported. Using the Iceberg method, they went below the surface of a single cleared forest to find the patterns, structures and beliefs that keep the process going. In "The Web of Life" they built a web of string across the room to see how one missing element affects everything else in an ecosystem. The role-play in "Understanding the Impact of Wood Poaching" put some of them in the position of illegal loggers and traders, others in that of rangers and local residents and made it very clear why enforcement so often fails. On day 4 the group went hiking in a nearby forest, collecting the litter they found along the trail. On day 6 came the study visit to Cluj-Napoca, where an ecology expert at the "Alexandru Borza" Botanical Garden taught them about deforestation and how to identify different tree species. One session was dedicated to reusing the paper waste collected during previous activities.
Phase 3 (Days 8–9): Day 8 was about turning knowledge into action. In two planting sessions, each participant planted their own tree in a nearby forest , over 100 trees in total. The same day, "Tech for Trees" and "Innovation for the Forest" looked at how technology is used against illegal logging, and a specialist who developed a forest surveillance application joined the group online to show his work. The last day focused on closing activities: a DEOR session where each national group planned its dissemination events, the final evaluation, the completion of the YouthPass certificates and the Secret Friend reveal.
Why the Project Was Implemented
How do you notice a forest disappearing? Not from one day to the next, but tree by tree, quietly, until the woods you grew up with look thinner than you remember. That is what two young volunteers from our community realised, and it is where this project began.
The more they looked into it, the clearer it became that this was not a local problem. In 2019, the Romanian publication Recorder estimated that around 20 million cubic metres of wood had been cut illegally in Romania, documenting cases where local authorities failed to act or were part of the problem. The same happens across most forests around the Carpathian Mountains, and it keeps happening for a simple reason: most people do not know what illegal logging looks like, so they never report it.
That is where young people come in. Deforestation is one of those subjects everyone agrees is important and almost nobody feels able to do anything about. We wanted to change that by giving 36 young people the knowledge to recognise illegal logging when they see it, to know who to call, and to understand what keeps the whole system running.
We chose Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland because these four countries share the Carpathian Mountains, and with them the same problem. Forests do not stop at borders and neither do the effects of losing them.
Results and Impact
"Cut greed, not trees" left a mark on everyone involved and, quite literally, on the ground. We ran an impact survey in the project's WhatsApp group a few months after the mobility.
The responses we collected showed that:
26 out of the 36 participants have adopted more environmentally-friendly habits and pay more attention to protecting nature and its resources.
22 of them feel more aware of deforestation and of its effects on the environment and on our daily lives.
25 have already taken part in or applied to other Erasmus+ projects since the exchange.
The project also generated tangible outputs:
Over 100 trees planted during the mobility, and more planted afterwards in each partner country
A video capturing moments from the youth exchange
A photo gallery from the youth exchange
A leaflet on deforestation, illegal logging and how to recognise it, created by the participants and shared at the dissemination events
The project banners and T-shirts
Local dissemination events in all four countries, reaching around 120 young people, where participants shared their experience and encouraged others to take part in Erasmus+
