We had a great year in 2025. Several trainings, seminars and volunteer projects. Here is a short summary of the activities with several links showing more details and pics of the given event. January always starts with our annual kick-off meetings; this year, a young man from Egypt joined our long-term volunteers. This is the month when most baby lambs and kittens are born, much to the delight of our volunteers.

By February, more and more families are visiting the Animal Park, so maintaining the ponies’ equipment was essential.

Starting in March, our media team in Debrecen received a boost with the addition of a new volunteer. We provided her with the necessary photography skills through a preparatory training course. Nature comes alive this month, hard-working hands are even more welcome. We prepared our Hortobágy volunteer group for the challenges of animal rescue with comprehensive training before they started the activities. At the invitation of our long-time partner, the Művésztér Association in Debrecen, we participated in a partnership-seeking meeting where the affairs of the DMJV municipality and local civil organizations were discussed.

Elementary school students from Hortobágy regularly meet with our volunteers, partly to improve their English language skills and partly to gain a personal understanding of our planet’s cultural diversity.

We are lucky as the participants in the volunteer support groups pass the baton to one another. We also provided the second group with a training on the program and the work as part of the project.

Our media volunteers regularly report on the different cultural and community programs in Debrecen. The some of the volunteers are interested in helping with surgical assistance; those who take on this role receive special training. This year, we organised two training courses for our own and international youth workers to teach them how to apply the methodology of forum theater for the benefit of their communities. The first one was organised in May in Debrecen.

Sadly, summer is a busy season at the Hortobágy Bird Hospital as there are many accidents in this season. We also prepared the volunteers arriving in June on how to work alongside staff members to save as many lives as possible.

We also helped international volunteers serving in Hungary with a facilitating a mid-term meeting in Visegrád.

By July, the peak season had arrived for wildlife and nature conservation as well. Our volunteers certainly didn’t have time to get bored. The wheelbarrow, the rake, and the shovel - after a while all these three tools can become good friends. “Internal duty” is when the young people clean the Volunteer House. This is also part of the daily work and essential for our own sake.

August 20 – Flower Carnival. Our volunteers documented the event again this year. In September, a new local volunteer joined our team. The year’s final volunteer group also began their service in September with a training session. To our great delight, a veterinarian from Egypt has been strengthening our team as a volunteer since September.

We launched the year’s second forum theater training session at the very end of September, but it ran well into October. At the request of the Tempus Public Foundation, we helped facilitate an on-arrival meeting to assist international volunteers newly arrived in Hungary to help their their integration.

Our volunteer veterinarian shared his experiences with the children of Hortobágy during a conversation in English. We wrapped up the year by participating at the Solidarity-ON event, the annual meeting of volunteer organizations.