Wild End
As the project Re-Wild has reached its end, we asked our partners what’s the impact of this journey on their organizations.
Our Croatian partner organization Aiki En shares about how the project has contributed to their development:
“Project Re-wild contributed to the long-term plan of our organization to turn as much as possible to activities carried out in nature. Through this project, we continued with the previous work of connecting young people with nature, and launched a new initiative of short camps for young people sleeping in nature. Besides the new activities, thanks to new knowledge about human developmental stages, two young youth workers from the organization gained confidence and empowerment for facilitating nature-based activities. Re-wilding in the context of Erasmus+ program was empowering our daily work and pushed us further in exploring nature and developing new methods and approaches in our work with young people.”
Our Romanian partner OM și COPAC (Human and Tree) shares that “Re-Wild has been a journey of settling down, integrating, and deep discovery for Human and Tree. The three youth workers and one trainer involved in the project developed their competencies in nature-based youth work in ways that far exceeded the initial expectations. We deepened our ongoing cooperation with local organizations and formed two new partnerships through this project and the many activities tested with youth in these organizations. The youngsters we worked with throughout the transfer of knowledge phase have increased their sense of belonging to nature and are more attuned to themselves and in contact with their community. Last but not least, we have a new Guide full of innovative methodology that we are using in our nature connection work and that is already spreading throughout many regional NGOs. Plans for future projects are tended to as small little sprouts of new spring growth, just as all else in this season, and we are looking forward to bringing more and more wildness into the local and regional community.”
And what about us? Radi Vidi Pats has not only empowered their youth workers and educators but also an amazing book* (yes, we call it a book), full of intriguing, meaningful, powerful and also fun methods that help us to reinforce the connection with nature. For ourselves and also for young people. Development of this material gave us a chance to truly reflect on which of our approaches work, which need to be upgraded. We learned more about how to work with such a vulnerable group as young men in prison with nature-based methods, as impossible as it might sound at first. Re-Wild also strengthened our capacity to work with young people and it has also definitely enriched the learning experiences we are designing and offering for the international youthworker community yearly. Besides that another truly beautiful result is strengthened partnership with our colleagues in Romania and Croatia.
*You can find the material created in Re-Wild here: Re-Wild – Proiect strategic european – Om și Copac
Project “Re-Wild” is financed by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union that in Romania is administrated by the National Agency for Community Programs in the Field of Education and Vocational Training. The article reflects only the opinion of the author.