"No Box was a training where I learned not only to think outside the box, but not to have a box." Between October 1 and 9, 2019, I attended the No Box International Training which took place in the mountains near Argos, near the village of Malandreni on the Greek Peloponnese. Twenty-five participants from ten European countries (Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Italy, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Latvia, Spain and the United Kingdom) came here. For a week, a beautiful piece of land called Hopeland became home to us, dominated by a four hundred-year-old oak that is widely visible. We slept in tents, helped with cleaning and cooking, went hiking and were just outside. Such an adult education camp. Only without warming up and without alarm clock, hihi.
The whole program was designed as a very intensive training of non-formal educators skills for the construction, implementation and evaluation of the educational program. We have learned a lot of theory: work with values, Kolb's cycle, critical behavior points, feedback, scale of cooperation, model of cooperation vs. struggle, Naomi model, four elements model etc. It was, of course, gradually dosed during all seven days we spent in Hopeland, and most importantly it related to a lot of practice. First we tried just an oral explanation of the rules of some activity in pairs. Subsequently, they prepared the activities and their implementation in a group of five participants. Finally, we all went into designing and implementing the program. It was strong, intense, but very effective. And I must say that without the support of the experienced trainers Ilze and Panagotis, we would probably not have succeeded in achieving this. But this was a unique educating experience.
All this in the beautiful Greek nature, which pampered us, cuddled us, but also tested our resistance to hail and persistent from rain. And that inspired us to so many rituals and stops in unplanned moments of contemplation, until we were sorry, we couldn't do more for its beauty by our presence. We cooked and ate in a house from straw, supplied only by solar collectors. So yes, sometimes we had a candlelit dinner as the energy ran out… but that all seemed dreamier and more magical to us. Kalispera, Ελπιδοχώρι, and ευχαριστώ Erasmus+ and Brno Connected.
