WANDERFUL! pilgrimage - learning by walking

We invite youth workers and everyone active in youth education and training to join the 3rd edition of WANDERFUL! pilgrimage / training course on the Maria Stock Pilgrim Trail in West Bohemia, Czechia.

In 2015 we were exploring traditional stages of pilgrim’s transformational process. In 2016 Solstice and Saint John’s rituals were our red thread. In 2017 you can live and co-create the journey with us.

FOR: youth workers, social workers, guides, mentors, trainers and educators, who:
- wish to experience pilgrimage and reflect on their own inner process,
- are interested in exploring the potential of pilgrimage and outdoor guided activities as a tool for personal development, learning and transformation,
- are ready to spend one week walking in Czech landscape, in very basic conditions, in community with people from different countries and cultures,
- are able to work in English. THE MAIN AIM of the course is to experience and explore pilgrimage and outdoor guided activities as a tool for modern youth work, social work, learning, personal development, and transformation. The group of participants will simply walk together through Czech landscape. We will use the personal experience of a pilgrim who leaves the usual certainties behind and starts a journey towards unknown landscapes and unusual situations. On the way there will be thematic inputs, small rituals and moments for reflection and learning from the journey. Later the whole experience will be analyzed as an example to help the transfer into participants' realities. We will sleep outside, cook for ourselves, share different approaches and tools connected with community and nature based youth work. In the beginning there will be more of personal experience and individual reflection. Towards the end the focus will be more on how to use this experience back home in favour of our youngsters and communities.

PROGRAMME ELEMENTS:
• learning about pilgrimage in different times and cultures;
• discovering possible use of pilgrimage in education, youth work and training
• sharing different examples of pilgrimage (spiritual, activist, artistic, ..)
• exploring our characters, values, roles, strengths and shadows as guides
• adapting pilgrimage to our realities, target groups, resources, personal styles
• how to be in service – to myself, to the community, to the environment, to higher purpose
• discovering our ways of dealing with challenges and potential of difficulties,
• how to prepare a pilgrimage, what to expect, what to have in mind for the logistics;
• collecting the outcomes of the week, integrating the experience, future planning.

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TEAM: Jan Látal, Helena Kosková, Vojta Tutr

Pictures from 2016: https://goo.gl/W3It9U