It certainly hasn’t been the warmest of springs here in Sweden. Quite the contrary in fact with some sources saying that it’s the coldest May since 1962 and the rainiest it has been in Sweden at this time of year in two centuries! That being said, the spring buds have still blossomed and the shoots of grass that have been left to grow are more than knee-high. The sun is sinks below the horizon around ten o’clock in the evening and comes up again at three-thirty, never really allowing the sky to get fully dark. Thus too is the energy of busy people running around Ytterjärna organizing the last bits and pieces of the YIP year. In the few in-between moments, when the sun slips behind a cool curtain of clouds, eyelids droop, often followed by tea drinking and catnaps. But in other moments, when the cloudless sky shines bright and warm, all are out basking in the energizing rays. But what is a moment, really? How long can it last? Oft times, thoughts slide backwards in remembrance of all that has taken place this year; the journeys, the stories, the friendships and the evolution of everything. And sitting here now, it seems to be a lifetime that’s happened within the snap of two fingers. With just more than three weeks left to go, time knows no bounds.
Looking Back:
So much has happened in the last few weeks that it is quite difficult to fathom…! We had a truly inspiring and action packed few days with Charles Eisenstein who invited us into an imagination of a beautiful future, a “new story” to step into, what it could look like and how we might get there together. It was an open course with many guests on top of the usual number of Yippies. The week finished off with a public event that was well attended and ended with a hot meal around the fire in the White House.
After the week with Charles we appropriately stepped from our explorations of the “new story” and into the exploration of Story with no bounds guided by Roi Gal-Or and Hannah Steenbergen. Roi’s effortless openness invited all to step into the work and the week culminated in a story-telling event in which each of the Yippies took to the stage to bless us with their fantasies of epic proportions. This opened up the group to each other again in a beautiful way, and was a perfect segue into listening to the process, evolution and outcome of everyone’s yearlong Personal Project.
In the week of Presentations, we saw the diversity of the group come to life in the form of music, photography, dance, poetry and film, as well as handmade clothes, the benefits of composting toilets, a report on the Ecological Footprint of YIP, research on the effect of Waldorf Education on the developing mind of a child and a personal account of the Israeli Palestinian Solution (not conflict). 
Other themes as well were presented, dissected and questioned. It was a rich week for all to bear witness to the various processes that have taken place
collectively and within individuals over the year, and to listen and to be heard. Each day was utterly different and exciting and came to a powerful end.
Finally, another appropriate transition took place in the fruition of YIP participant, Inte Koster’s personal project: the Outdoor Experience. One week of canoeing and camping along the lakes and rivers to the west of Järna, cooking over fires on pots hanging from tripods, catching fish and waking up each morning to the sound of the wind and the birds. Although some were in their true element and others were challenged, for all it was a beautiful process and tightened the connections to the earth, each other and ourselves. There was rain and wind and sun and we all came back looking forward to a hot shower and a familiar bed.
Personal Project Presentations:
Name: Martin Summer
Project: Creating Spaces
Name: Pablo Gonzales Nieto
Project: Writes of Passage
This is a space for the story of young people who are in the transition of coming out into the world, an attempt to connect different contexts and to create a sense of connection and identity in this generation.
Often we have these thoughts, these thoughts of uncertainty, we ask ourselves, what’s the point of all this? Is it even worth it? These issues rise even more as we enter adulthood. Now, I obviously do not have the answer to that, and I don’t think someone ever will, but all of these questions about society and the implications of living and coming out into the world raise fear and anxiety to those who are beginning this path.
This project is, in some way, an attempt to a create form of diffusion, to express and spread the position and point of view of different individuals of different contexts but in a certain stage in their lives. With this you can provide a space of solidarity and understanding as well as generating a more conscious approach in the world that surrounds you.
Are you born in the ‘90’s? Want to participate in this project? Or just want to check it out?
Click here to learn more!
The Outdoor Experience:
A week of Canoeing on the lakes and rivers of Sweden
Organized and hosted by YIP7 Participant, Inte Koster, as her Personal Project
On Sunday afternoon, the 31st of May, we paddled off to our first camping spot where we spent the night all together, planning to leave in three smaller groups the following day. Held by the intention to open doors to a joyful and pure exploration of our relationship with nature, and a hope to expand our understanding, compassion and appreciation for the nature around and inside of us, we started off our week with a beautifully clear Swedish early summer night. The next morning we were awoken by heavy rain falling on the tents and tarps.
The week contained ease and challenge, strong wind and heavy rain, as well as warming sun and never ending light. I am deeply grateful to have shared this experience full of magic and joy together that allowed for whole new parts of all individuals to surface, to have witnessed the impact and sense of freedom and to have been given new inspiration on the theme of ‘the relation between humans and nature’ and my role in all of it. -Inte Koster
A reflection from YIP7 Participant, Veerle Kaffka:
Rough lakes, the wind, the sun, the rain, the black water, the rocks, the dark green forests, the fresh grass fields and just us in our canoes. Canoeing the whole day, setting up camp, creating a fire pit, building a tripod, cooking on the fire, surviving the week on porridge, lentils and rice, singing songs to the sunset and 90’s hits by the fire.
The Outdoor Experience has been great for me. It enabled me to see a different side of Sweden I am actually constantly surrounded by. Ytterjärna is just very neat and tidy. I felt very comfortable in the outdoors! I did not expect that before! I feel something has shifted within me during this year that made it possible to enjoy this week to my fullest!
I am really happy with Inte’s contribution to the group. She did a great job, guiding one group on her own. We can all picture her giving other groups of people this kind of experiences! These are very important because they strengthen trust in the connection we obviously have with nature, and within ourselves.
The Next Steps:
A few words from YIP OT, Christianne Sinoo
The realization that YIP7 is coming to an end is kicking in. The participants are talking about where to travel, where to meet and what the next learning journey should be… Stepping out of the physical community here in Ytterjärna is a big task.
The nest, while often challenging, has been holding the space for each and everyone to truly meet, through joy and struggle, through conflict and love, through opinions and beliefs. This deep meeting of the Other, has evolved in a safe place to explore all kinds of questions about life, work, earth, community, responsibility and much, much more. Now that YIP is ending, it is time for the individuals to step into the world and meet it; meet it’s questions, it’s opinions, it’s beliefs, it’s arguments, it’s attitude…. Having gone through this myself, I see this time of stepping out into the world as a really important and challenging part 
of the learning experience. I remember the anger of not being able to articulate what I had learned, the confrontation of not being understood in my freshly developed ideas. Yet, the deepening of the questions started right there. I realized that if I wanted to be understood I needed to live it and give it to the world; internalize my ideas into my own being, giving space for diversity and staying in relation with people who carry a different story.
“Working with resistance” is a sentence that stuck with me this year and that I want to give to YIP7 as a reminder (Course: Sustainability, Eduardo Shimahara). “Working with resistance” is a space of questioning, of curiosity and listening that I feel is required in order to develop relations and transformation in the world. In taking the first step and not walking away or fighting resistance you will eventually be seen and met by the other as well.
I wish everyone in YIP7 luck and joy on their next steps and let us all remember to let questions be lived, be heard and held when people dare to speak them out!
Initiative Forum Update:
Initiative Forum 2015 – Freesponsibility
Check out the first edition of IF TV!
The conference is coming closer at an immense speed and luckily things are coming together in a beautiful way. More and more of our ideas and visions are manifesting themselves in different shapes and forms on the campus, as well as in the Program itself. The list of Workshops that will be offered, the Cultural events that will take place and the lectures each morning are nearing complettion and looks amazing! Contributors from all over are confirmed to enrich this conference; many new faces as well as faces we know very well.
Every freshly applied participant makes us realize once again that this event is actually going to happen and is one more reason to put all our best intentions, enthusiasm and imagination into the preparation of the Initiative forum.
Although not every detail is in fully in place yet, everything around us seams to be in peaceful excitement and anticipation of the people that will fill this campus in less then 10 days! The Waldorf School is getting ready to be shelter for participants who will need some sleep after a full day of inspiration, conversation and celebration. The green fields for camping are patiently and peacefully waiting for those amongst you who feel like camping. The main hall in the Culture house is silently vibrating in anticipation of the artists, poets, contributors and bands that will fill the stage with deep words, sweet sounds and magical vibes. The dinning-space already smells like cake, tea and a little bit of life music. The different rooms filled with the powerful June sun can not wait to become a space that hosts various workshops and presentations. The donated food that we are receiving from different organic companies arrives in a daily wave of packages. The posters for the evening events start to fly out to Järna and Stockholm.
Everything here is in enthusiastic and trembling anticipation. And in the middle of everything: us Yippies. Running from meeting to meeting, from design of the morning contents to school cleaning, from Open Space preparation to sign making!
Little tasks like making signs or organizing the cleaning can seem tedious and dry sometimes, but they are as much part of hosting a conference as all the celebrations and magical collective moments that the conference will bring.
We are looking forward to welcoming you here!
Not yet Registered?? Please do via the website here, or send an email to [email protected]
Do you have an initiative you would like to Present and/or Market at the Forum? Please send a short description to the same email address and we will send you some details about the Presentations and Marketplace!
YIP Summer School:
It has begun!
The YIP Summer School – Shape, has kicked off with gusto! With eighteen participants coming from various parts of the world, some YIP alumni and many not, they are engaged together, living and learning with support from Under Tallarna. Many are expected to join us for Initiative Forum, after their time at Shape!
“When we come together to learn in community, we open the possibility to both meet our own needs as learners and tap into a collective creativity and wisdom. In this way, we can practice to walk between individuality and community. We can be both learners and teachers at the same time.
We hope that the YIP Summer School will offer us a space to discover the potentials that lie in the relationships we build. We want to reflect on this discovering process and, through this reflection, investigate the potentials of both community and education.
We hope SHAPE will be the first of many collective learning experiments in the years ahead!”
Looking Forward:
This will be kept short, as time is running beneath our feet at dizzying speeds. We are engrossed fully in the final preparations for Initiative Forum 2015 – Freesponsibility. Blurry Yippies can be seen racing between Tallevana, the White House, Kulturhuset and Orjanskolan, cleaning, planning, sipping coffee and pointing at big sheets of paper with all kinds of notes with dates and times and agreements. It is all being woven together beautifully, and come Friday, the 19th of June, the first arrivals will make everything more real. The gathering will carry us for a week, until we must say goodbye to all the wonderful souls who joined us here for the Forum and can take a moment as YIP7 to exhale and relax. Following the event, we will have the closing week to what has been a truly brilliant 7th Chapter in the book of YIP. Please wish us luck…! 
The Newsletter
The Newsletter is a monthly mailing update on the life and times of YIP and is a wonderful way to remain connected. It is sent out once a month and gives an overview of what has happened, what is happening and what is on the horizon. Every quarter (3 months) we plan to put out a more in-depth issue that looks into the Organization of YIP from a similar lense.
Please spread the good word of YIP by forwarding to friends and family and inviting them to sign up!
If you have any questions or concerns regarding the newsletter or feel that there is something you would wish to see more of, contact [email protected]
Enjoy reading!