Arcus Ecological Association was founded in 1988 by high school students in Bačka Topola (Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, Republic of Serbia), as a part of Youth’s Organization. In the following years, the membership of association was growing rapidly by joining of high school students, university students and other people. The main goal of this organization, according to its statute, is ecological education of young people and environment protection and nature conservation.
Since 1991, the Arcus Ecological Association works as an independent, non-profit organization. We have over a 100 members, but only a small number of these people are active. Actions are coordinated by chairman, deputy chairman and the chairmanship. The membership is free and everyone can join in. There are two main work groups in Arcus: botanical and ornithological group. In recent years, the ornithological group works with very good results. According to already established tradition the activities of the association are manifold. We organize media campaigns and lectures for educational purposes. These lectures are held by experts who speak about actual problems in our environment and explain them with simple words that ordinary people can understand. Association members travel abroad to meetings and summer camps. Arcus is an organization with more than two decades of work, which includes realization of more than 20 Eco-camps, wintertime indoor education programmes, art and literature contests. Results of this hard work are successful environmental projects. Our members and supporters think that the environmental education is very important for the next generations, especially for the children, so we must build a future where people live in harmony with nature. The majority of these actions are still regularly organized; most of our income comes from our sponsors, supporters and local government funds.
Apart from this, the conservationists also do some practical work. They organize actions of cleaning and maintenance of the city, and as a civil organization they give their contribution in solving professional, administrative and organizational problems which occur in the acts of defending the protected areas of the environment. Furthermore, with the help of their professionals, they forward the collected data to the authorized organs (Institute for Nature Conservation of Serbia, etc.). We must not forget to mention important research and scientific work.
We have members from different scopes of activities, mostly university students, but there are biologists, informatics engineers, agricultural engineers and teachers, too.