Minus 2 days until 82 more friends from around the world will join us here in Serra de Estrella, the mountain of the stars. This was a special day for the Preparation Team. We worked on the program of the camp and we connected with the place and with the people even more, especially with Pedro and Lino from the Pousada de Juventudes where we're staying. They showed us the magical city neraby, Covilhã, full of life and colours, and they helped us finding places in need where we can volunteer. After a whole afternoon of research.. SUCCESS! Kindergardens, local associations, 2 festivals, parks and other natural spots that need some cleaning. One day of the camp will be fully dedicated to them!
And the other days? Well, after months of team-building, co-working and shaping ideas for the camp, today all the pieces started falling into place, completing the puzzle and forming the ultimate mosaic of this summer camp: Natural Human Communication!
If you're following this storytelling adventure you may have had a glimpse of what this is all about.
Today, we are surrounded by technologies allowing us to expand our ways of communicating. However, at the same time, some of our innate tools are getting lost. Our conviction is that they are actually not lost; just hidden until we find the way to access them and give them new life.
For the last year we tried to understand the many facets of what natural communication can actually be. 4 groups, 4 close-knit families have been formed to design the summer camp; 3 days each, to create a fluid unfolding of the experience.
Now, being in the environment where the program will come to life, the families were able to work with freedom and inspiration to complete it! And now it's all done. We've been in no offices, no factories, we used no computers, no internet. Everything happened by the river, up the hill, under the shade of the oaks, moving from spot to spot to follow the sun rays during the evening, to finalise the day under a starry sky.
The program of this year materialises, step-by-step, and becomes more diverse and mind-blowing along the way. We look ahead towards activities like visits to mountain lakes, a morning walk of 8 kilometers through the rocky mountains, workshops about how to give up addictions, macrobiotics nutrition, the relationship between human and technologies, precious socialising moments with music and arts, movies, Open Mind Sessions, typical meals from each country and much much more. Together, we will create a marvellous experience, with the aim of better understanding what natural communication means to humans. There will be games and activities for all kinds of communication, with oneself, with the others and with the world, in a time where the words and ideas of a person can influence the life of millions of people. These and other wonders will catch the Y-TOP in 2017!