EKO is happy to announce that one more very important seminar has been successfully completed. The project took place in Youth Centre Piispala (Kannonkoski), in Central Finland. In a really ‘warm’ and great environment 43 youth workers from different countries gathered to develop their  knowledge and to find methods for engaging young people in getting in touch with Nature. The project was implemented from 4th till 8rd of February 2024 by the host organization Piispala and participants from 8 more countries including: Croatia, Bulgaria, Greece, Spain, Netherlands Armenia, Lithuania and Finland.

Piispala is the biggest of the nine national Youth Centres in  Finland. Their mission is to promote youth activities and support the good life of children and young people. They also serve as a  versatile centre of leisure, sports and wellbeing for families, seniors, businesses and sports groups. Their main target group is camp schools and they conduct and develop youth work on regional, national and international level. On international level they carry out ESC and  Erasmus+ projects.

The main objectives of the project

The seminar aimed to establish connection with nature and respect for nature. For three days youth workers, teachers, youth leaders and social workers  developed their knowledge and learned new ways to support and encourage young people to connect with and to respect nature.

Non-formal education activities were planned in order to meet the needs faced by youth workers through networking and creating synergies with different organizations, members of the relevant communities and decision-makers to engage youth in the society and civic participation.

Activities of the project

The programme of the seminar included lectures, workshops and practical activities. One of the lectures was a research about youth’s perspective of what nature is and how they feel in it. Also, each organization presented their work and especially their best practices related to nature, which opened the way to create international networks for future cooperation, but also to take examples for our future work. One more interesting experience was the visit to the youth center’s cottage, where they explained the benefits the animals have and how they help young people with physical or mental health challenges. Participants also had a useful workshop on how to connect with nature and themselves. The last workshop was an art related workshop about soap amulet jewelry.   Of course, from this seminar the activities in the nature were a must. Participants had the chance to enjoy skiing, ice skating, saunas, swim to cold lake and the swimming pools etc. Last but not least, there was a Tour de Table event where the youth workers shared snacks of their country, told about or present work of their organization and mingled to visit tables of other organizations. Overall the  participants had the opportunity to get better in some key competencies such as multilingual competence, personal, social and learning to learn competence while enjoying the beautiful and snowy biggest Finland’s youth center.

An amazing opportunity and great experience for EKO’s team

The project was an unforgettable experience that enabled EKO’s members to develop themselves, both individually and collectively and helped them to establish themselves as active participants in public life. Georgios, Konstantinos, Konstantina, Zoi, Eleni, Aggeliki and Maria were the members of the Greek team whom we really wanna thank for all their contribution and collaboration throughout the project!

As EKO, we are also very grateful for that amazing opportunity given to the Greek team and we thank our partner Piia Pyykkinen, as well as the rest members of the hosting organization Piispala, for all their hard work and for creating such an impactful project!