Art of Nature - The Objectives

The Objective:

The whole objective is to give you a unique experience. The objective is not dependent on the place or the activities. The experience is dependent on the process of being, doing and living few days in a specific way.
The whole program works at three levels –

• Experience yourself in nature,

• Expand your limits through challenges

• Express your experiences, thoughts and feelings through various forms of art.

Experiencing

Minimum Belongings: Yes we are so used to every little thing that we assume that we cannot live without them. In our camps you experience the fun of being in nature with minimum belongings. For example, kids in our camp stay without chips, chocolates or even food of their choice for all the days of the camp and do not miss them and they are happy. Participants do not carry gadgets, or cash – rather carry a very limited inventory of clothes and even manage within them irrespective of rains, clothes getting dirty etc.

Food – You will find basic food in our camps. Either we cook or we tie up with the local residents to cook food for us – in any which way the food is simple and nutritious. Varieties are kept to minimum, the idea is not to cater to ‘choices” - rather – whatever is available we “ALL” share and eat/ drink that and enjoy it.

Responsibility with Independence – This starts with packing up for the camp. We request parents that just give a print out of preparation guidelines and let child do his ALL the packing by itself. Right or wrong – whatever the child packs the child learns to survive with it.

Responsibility Self & Belongings: The idea is that the children experience responsibility & independence by taking their own decisions. What to wear, how much to eat, how to take care of dirty clothes and so on. Mistakes are an essential part of learning. How do they want to take care of themselves or even how do they want to manage their social relationships and feelings in for them to decide.

Responsibility of the GROUP: It starts with setting up the codes at the beginning of the camp. We decide how we are going to work together and how are we going to take care of each other – not only people but even their feelings?. We encourage kids to talk about themselves - not talk for others. So no complaining or back biting.

During ALL the activities faculty plays a mute observer’s role in our camps - they are there for safety and guidance - but we let the group dynamics be a teacher to the children.

Circle TIME: This is a system of democratic problem solving – be it a physical, mental, social or emotional problem. This is also an forum for children to express their feelings and thoughts and to also learn how to respond to others feelings, thoughts and problems. Circle time is also a reflective process to gather learnings from various experiences.

GO with the FLOW – In our urban settings we are so much “watch” oriented that the watch guides our life. When we go for these nature camps we try to let us go with the flow like a river. The water in the river does not know how, what, where, when? – it just flows. So, when in nature, we keep our questions, our worries aside – we just go with the flow, like how a river does.

Nature

The objective here is invite you to soak into the nature. To observe nature intensely. So see miracle in every aspect of nature – be it a bee, or a tree, a stone or a bone! The idea is not to click pictures and collect trophies, but to click pictures using our mind and let experience become the profound album. The idea is not just to learn about nature, but to also learn from nature.

We design activities to experience nature, observe, and express. Activities are specially designed to experience group work, accept each other, parent-child bonding, and nature exploration, explore art and other mediums.

In all the activities we accept every child the way he/ she is and motivate them but not interfere with their working. That means instructions are given minimum.

Respecting nature and the outdoors also forms an integral part of the program. We need to appreciate what is remaining of our natural resources and wilderness. We believe that as long as we respect nature it will continue to treat us well. A leave NO TRACE attitude is followed at camp.

Adventure Activities

The key here to overcome oneself. To leap in the face of challenge, to use courage within to overcome the fear within. To not just climb mountains, but to conquer our tiredness, our apprehensions and explode our limits. To grow our belief in ourselves, to build perseverance and resilience.

Living in outdoors

Most of our camps have natural living environment – viz sleeping in tents under the sky or with simple sleeping arrangements like a dormitory. Also means, we wash, ourselves in nature streams and go for nature calls in nature!

The idea is to give children experience of being fully into the outdoors, away from our routine and “too comfortable” urban lifestyle.

We believe this closeness to nature adds and enhances humility to our personality

Safety

Follow the Adventure Guides: All our adventure faculty is trained and equipped to conduct adventure activity and are well trained to sense the danger and take care of safety. So we decide in the beginning of the camp that while we are doing any adventure activity we will strictly follow our adventure guide. We have trust in them that they will allow us to try many things but wherever there is any danger they will not allow us and we will follow them. Sometimes we may be convinced with their decision sometime we may not – but to keep safety a higher priority we will FOLLOW THEM.

Medical: We do carry first aid box which consist of pain killers, sprays and paracetamol. But as a approach we allow kids to take his/ her decision that how his body is responding. Sometimes we push the child to push the limits and go with the flow.

Flock of genies: We follow the principle of “FLOCK” and do not encourage kids to do individual activity as per their wish or allow kids to go wherever they want to. Flock ensures safety and security to all!

Let us ENJOY and be with the nature together - we hope you will have a great experience with us. Do give us your feedback after we come back from the camp. Please see "preparation guide lines" to know what to carry and strictly follow the list.

Also read Preparatory Instructions to participants