WAKA I — In Nature We Believe

A week in clans at the edge of the forest, Grain&Sens, Ardèche

Youth workers from five countries spent a week camping at Grain&Sens, living as a village of two clans and learning to facilitate with nature rather than about it.

Landing place: Grain&Sens Ecovillage, Lavenant, Boffres, Ardèche, France
When: 23–31 August 2026
Crew: Youth workers from France, Belgium, Slovenia, Spain and Slovakia, with a facilitation team from Grain&Sens and Gaia Education
Partners: Grain&Sens (FR) · Gaia Education Europe (BE) · Zavod Veles (SI) · RaizameVivo (ES) · Ježko (SK)

The first WAKA. A week at Grain&Sens, an ecovillage in the hills above Boffres in the Ardèche, from 23 to 31 August 2026 — funded through Erasmus+ KA153 with the French national agency.

The shape of the week

The group lived as a village, everyone camping at the edge of the forest, and split into two clans of about twelve that stayed together all week. The days followed the elements, and every morning began in a circle where members of the team sat in the directions of the 8 Shields wheel: a song, gratitude, waking the body, hearing every voice, and the day’s news.

Arrival — Sunday. Tents up, a welcome circle, the first fire.
Day 1 — Foundation. The clans form.
Day 2 — Earth. A clan journey on foot.
Day 3 — Water. Designing activities in nature, with the eight-direction wheel as a map.
Day 4 — Air. A quest, sunrise to sunrise. Each person chose how far to go; some stayed in the village, and everyone stayed connected through the fire.
Day 5 — Fire. Coming back, and telling the story of it to the clan.
Day 6 — Ether. An Open Space on taking it home — adapting the quest for young people and minors, funding, risk and culture — and the closing of the clans.
Day 7 — Closing. Next steps, certificates and celebration.

Afternoons belonged to the participants. The more experienced among them formed an inner circle that held sessions and looked after the group, and the Open Space was theirs to lead.

What the week produced

The Nature Facilitated Education Collection is still being written from what the participants brought and designed during the week. This platform is where it lives: a collection that the next group can add to, organised around the same eight directions that shaped the week.

Credits

Project management: Romain Guilbaud (Grain&Sens), with Henriette Scholz as assistant project manager and participant coordinator. Facilitation: Romain and Nadège (Grain&Sens), Ivan Ballesteros Barnie (Gaia Education), Henriette and Rosa, with Antu and Eponine supporting.

Co-funded by the European Union under Erasmus+ KA153-YOU, through the French national agency (Agence du Service Civique).

12 resources came off this voyage

East

Morning Circle

A short standing circle that opens the day: one breath together, the shape of the day named out loud, and one word from every person.

Ritual15–25 min6–30 peopleoutdoors

East+ South

Web of Connections

The group stands in a circle and passes a ball of twine, each person naming a relationship between themselves and someone or something else, until the web is visible and heavy.

Method30–45 min8–25 peopleeither

South-west+ North-west

The Group Object

Over several days the group builds a single object from things each person brings or finds, which then presides over every circle and is dismantled or gifted at the end.

Ritual30 min to start, revisited daily6–30 peopleeither

South-east+ North

Forest Soundscape

Participants sit apart in silence and draw a map of everything they can hear, with themselves at the centre, then walk each other's maps.

Method30–50 min4–25 peopleoutdoors

South-east+ South

Predator and Prey

A large outdoor running game in which participants take the roles of a real local food chain, with resources to find and predators to avoid, ending in a hard conversation about what happens when one link is removed.

Game45–75 min12–40 peopleoutdoors

South

Building a Fire and Water Transport System

Small teams are given the job of moving fire and water across a site using only what they can find and build, then must hand the working system over to another team.

Method2–4 hours8–30 people, in teams of 4–6outdoors

North-west+ West

The Council of All Beings

Participants are found by a non-human being of the place, make a mask for it, and then hold a council in which each speaks in that being's voice to an assembly of humans who must sit and listen.

Ritual3–5 hours8–30 peopleoutdoors

North+ North-east

Deep Time

A long rope is laid across a field as the age of the Earth; participants walk it, placing what they know, and discover where in the last few centimetres their entire species appears.

Method90 min–3 hours6–30 peopleoutdoors

West+ North

Nature Solo

Each participant is walked to a spot they cannot see anyone else from, and left there — for three hours, a night, or a day — with no task, no phone and no book.

Practice3 hours to 24 hoursAny, if the land can hold them apartoutdoors

South-west

Nature Mandala

Small groups gather only what is already fallen and build a large circular composition on the ground, then walk away from it without photographing it first.

Method60–120 min4–30 peopleoutdoors

South+ West

Playing with Systems

A sequence of embodied systems games — secret triangles, the balancing game, and a resource commons — that give a group the felt experience of feedback, delay and collapse in under an hour.

Game60–90 min10–30 peopleeither

North-east+ West

The Next Step

Before leaving, each participant names one specific action they will take at home within a month, tells it to a small home group, and is checked on by that group six weeks later.

Method60–90 min, plus a follow-up callAny, in home groups of 4–5either