Raising awareness in Belarus
Through our successful Eastern European project “Saving Animals with Computers”, we are supporting an educational project for school students in Belarus.
When it comes to animal welfare in general and animal experimentation in particular, Belarus is a blank slate. As a successor state of the Soviet Union, animals and their protection have never played a role here. Unlike, for example Ukraine, Belarus still has no legislation regulating animal experiments in any form. Anyone can conduct experiments however they like. There are no statistics on animal use because no one collects them. Even cosmetic testing on animals is said to still be standard practice. Only very slowly are ethical and scientific concerns beginning to develop in some places.
The only NGO in Belarus advocating for the use of humane methods in research and education is the Center for Ethical Attitude Toward Nature (Ecoetika). According to its own statements, chairwoman Ludmila Loginovskaya and her team have succeeded, since the founding of the organization 13 years ago, in replacing mandatory animal experiments in the study of medicine, veterinary medicine, biology, and other subjects with animal-free teaching methods at half of all university institutes. This is a tremendous success made possible through collaboration with the International Network for Humane Education – InterNICHE. We also contributed to three of the university projects, providing both software and hardware.
These targeted successes should not obscure the fact that there is widespread lack of knowledge about animal experiments and animal-free methods among the general public. For this reason, Ecoetika planned a public outreach campaign with a focus on schools. We supported this initiative financially.
According to Ludmila’s report, 54 schools were reached. They were supplied with teaching materials, and teachers received training. 109 students participated in an online quiz, and as part of a competition, 80 students submitted creative works such as posters, stories, poems, or illustrations. The project also generated 26 media reports.
On May 18, 2019, the award ceremony for the winners of the quiz and creative competition took place at the Belarusian National Technical University. The young participants received prizes, and both students and teachers received certificates. Among the speakers was our Ukrainian project partner Dimitrij Leporskij. In this way, we were able to help plant small seeds among the scientists of tomorrow in this Eastern European country.
Winners of the Belarusian competition.
Creative student work.
Dimitrij Leporskij (right) handing out prizes to the winners.