We had planned together with the teachers to have a weekend workshop as a kick-off for our youths in Rovaniemi. And this weekend was the best time to keep it. We were in a cottage village just by our Ounasvaara hill and the weather during the weekend was just beautiful.

We started our program on Friday on a dinner and we had the pleasure to welcome Alf also to our workshop. Friday's program was mainly to get to know each other and have some fun. This was really good idea, because most of the youngest members of our PIPErs have changed and they are almost totally new for the project. We played a game and sat by the fire. After ten in the evening it was time to go to our own cottages and go to sleep.

On Saturday morning we started our real work for the PIPE. And there were more people present than on Friday. We gathered to one cottage and Alf started the program. He told us the mainpoints of the project and teachers and youths could ask questions. We saw also the video from Alytus and the kick off teaser. All together the morning was quite a success and teachers and youths got a lot of new ideas. After lunch we said goodbye to Alf and then we put our youths to work. The idea of the weekend was to go through the Future Workshop and develope the Future Charte more concrete and start to plan Action plan. Youths were very active and they had a lot of good ideas. They had time to work in small groups untill dinner and then we had some activities outside. We went for a walk and took some good pictures. In the evening we had free time and lots of fun things happened, but I will leave some things as a secret. You may want to ask from the youths about this.

On Sunday morning we got through the groups ideas and put them together. So the action plan is almost ready with small and big things. All the participants enjoyed this event a lot and we plan to have at least one in the spring time as an evaluation weekend. But hopefully we can have another one also during this fall time. It is good to get all the youths and adults together some times so we can share our ideas.

So I would like to thank all the participants and especially Alf because your speech was a very good basis for our weekend!

Made by Anne Luiro, local coordinator