At 12 locations across Bitola and the surrounding area, in a single weekend - hundreds of residents, schools, kindergartens and associations. The goal - cleaning. The name - „General Clean-up Weekend". The result - one of the largest environmental actions in the country this year.

Bitola municipality coordinated the action. The public utility „Komunalec" provided the logistics - collection trucks, containers, gloves, bags. The clean-up covered public surfaces, parks and illegal dump sites.

The list of participants is disproportionately long for a weekend action. Dozens of primary schools - „Sveti Kliment Ohridski", „Goce Delčev", „Elpida Karamandi", „Dame Gruev" and others. Secondary schools - the „Josip Broz Tito" gymnasium, the agricultural school, the school of economics. Kindergartens across the city. Cultural associations. Pensioners' organisations. A whole community for one day.

The aim is not one-off. According to the organisers, „General Clean-up Weekend" is part of a longer process that includes sorting and recycling. That means the weekend is followed by months of concrete activities - more bins for plastic and paper, educational workshops, control of illegal dumps.

Why Bitola, why now? Because in recent years the city has faced a string of environmental problems - from wild dumps on the outskirts to heavier air pollution in winter. „General Clean-up Weekend" is the answer - not to a state strategy, but to a concrete local problem that local people have started to treat as their own.

For other Macedonian cities this is a lesson. Cleaning is not just „Komunalec's" job. It is the job of schools, parents, pensioners, civic associations. When a community decides it wants to care for its place - then the public utilities work better too. That is the whole idea of „General Clean-up Weekend" - not Komunalec cleaning alone, but the city showing that it has people who care.