From consumption to connection

Aims of the tool

To give youth workers and peer facilitators everything needed to run a four-workshop nature-based programme on overconsumption, on a small budget and without specialist equipment.

Specifically:
— to offer young people practices for regulating stress that do not require money, a purchase or a screen;
— to connect overconsumption to the physical and emotional state it usually comes from, rather than treating it as a failure of willpower;
— to make outdoor group work genuinely accessible, including for participants with mobility, sensory, language or anxiety-related needs;
— to equip facilitators with the protocols such materials usually leave out: what to do when a participant becomes distressed, how to handle disclosures beyond your competence, and how to collect data lawfully;
— to model honest evaluation, including results that did not work.

Description of the tool

This handbook documents "Od navade do narave / From Consumption to Connection", a Solidarity Project run in Ljubljana between January and June 2026 by a five-person youth team, with coaching from a certified forest therapy guide and psychologist.

The programme addressed overconsumption among 18–30 year-olds — not as a matter of individual discipline, but as a predictable response to precarious work, unaffordable housing, constant connectivity and an advertising system designed to reach people at exactly the moment they feel worst. The starting assumption was that participants already know impulse buying is not a solution. What is missing is noticing the moment as it happens, and having an alternative available in it.

Four five-hour workshops were delivered to an open, rotating group: forest bathing, land art with found materials, foraging with a shared meal, and writing in nature. Somatic practices run across all four rather than forming a session of their own. Because the group was open, each workshop stands alone and each ends with the same two takeaways: a pocket-sized card with one practice the participant would realistically use, and a 24-hour pause before non-essential purchases.

The handbook contains: the reasoning behind the programme and an explicit account of where that reasoning is weak; minute-by-minute scripts for all four workshops with adaptations and common facilitator errors; a safety protocol covering de-escalation, disclosures of self-harm, and referral limits; an accessibility protocol; GDPR-compliant consent and photography practice; evaluation instruments; planning checklists; and a chapter written for young people to use on their own without a facilitator.

Learning outcomes. After using this handbook, a facilitator will be able to plan and deliver a five-hour outdoor session for 10–15 people; recognise signs of distress in a group outdoors and respond without turning the group's attention to the person; assess and adapt a site for physical and sensory accessibility; run a consent and data process that meets GDPR; and evaluate a programme in a way that surfaces null results rather than hiding them.

The handbook is deliberately frank about limits. It states that the evidence base for nature-based wellbeing is thinner than commonly presented, that the group is probably a stronger active ingredient than the natural setting, and that a one-off workshop changes little on its own. Facilitators who prefer promotional framing will want to adapt the tone; we found that naming these limits aloud is what earned participants' trust.

Free to use, adapt and translate.