R . Ando et al .: Radioprotection 2024 , 59 ( 4 ), 261 – 269 263 Fig . 3 . Teacher collecting data with her pupils .
the parents . They therefore collected the results of the measurements carried out by themselves and by the villagers including their pupils and students at the occasion of outdoors activities ( Fig . 3 ) and developed small concrete exercises in various disciplines particularly in relation to the dominant agricultural activity of the village . These exercises gradually allowed the students to better understand the way in which they were exposed as well as the possible actions to limit or reduce their exposure . For these young teachers , participation in this activity also gave them access to the new technologies provided by the project , whether to measure radioactivity or to process data with personal computers . It was also an opportunity for them to address the questions they had about the accident , their life in the village and how to protect themselves . Very often , these young teachers sought to go beyond the activities developed with the pupils . Some have engaged in the search for scientific and historical information to deepen their knowledge . Others have contributed to setting up “ citizen science ” and “ participatory science ” type projects involving students and parents . All these initiatives and actions have greatly contributed to giving new meaning to their teaching activity , which until then had been confined to transmitting knowledge from official school books with no real effect because the reality of life in the village was not taken into account .
2.3
The local projects on the memory of the accident developed by young people of Olmany and of the Bragin district
In Olmany , a group of young people mobilized to produce a video on the village with the support of French experts who provided them with the necessary equipment and know-how . Initially , the young people did not feel a priori concerned by the consequences of radioactivity in their village . They were especially attracted by the handling of video material and a first video produced was not focused on the daily life of the villagers . By asking themselves the question of the meaning to be given to this video and the message to be delivered outside their village during various dialogues with the experts , they gradually realized that the production of the video was a means of gathering from village elders the story of the accident
Fig . 4 . A view of a section of the Lost Land exhibition .
because they were still too young at the time of the accident to have any memories of it . After filming several testimonies , they finally got interested in the actions developed in the ETHOS Project . The video was presented to all the inhabitants of the village on the occasion of an evening organized in the communal hall and was the opportunity for a lively dialogue on the daily life in Olmany and the aspirations of young people for the future of the village .
In the district of Bragin , residents first mobilized around a project aimed at gathering information on the lost villages of the district . The objective was to contribute to the preservation of the memory of the disappeared villages in the Belarusian part of the forbidden zone of 30 km around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and to give an image and also produce a narrative . To do this , working groups have been set up with volunteers to collect testimonies from former residents , documents and photos . This project continued with the production of a larger exhibition in the context of the Bragin Historical Museum , which was renovated on the occasion with the financial support of the CORE Programme . Most of the volunteers in these groups were young adults . The preparation of this permanent exhibition entitled ’ Lost Land ’ required a lot of work and among other things gave rise to exchanges with national and international artists ( Fig . 4 ). Here again , this project has encouraged exchanges between generations . The exhibition inaugurated in 2007 was a great success with the local population but also attracted many Belarus and foreign visitors ( Bragin historical museum , 2023 ).
Another project developed within the framework of the CORE Programme concerning the memory of the accident entitled " Tell me my Cloud " involving schoolchildren and their teachers provided the opportunity to create working groups in 26 schools in Belarus and 26 abroad mainly in Europe but also in Japan . The basic idea of this project was to ask volunteer teachers to develop with their students short videos telling a story related to the Chernobyl cloud which spread over Belarus but also throughout Europe and beyond in April 1986 . Each teacher was free to choose a story with the pupils and to get help for the production in the form of a video by local , national and even international artists . The innovative and international aspect of the approach greatly appealed to young teachers . At