Nine Days in the Forest: A Different Kind of Education
Imagine spending nine days living in tents in the forest, waking up to birdsong, cooking bread over a wood fire, harvesting vegetables from a garden, and falling asleep under the stars. This is the experience offered by Together in the Forest and Re-GENERATION Camp, an international summer camp programme run by Cooperativa Liberi Sogni — a social cooperative based in the Lecco area that manages educational, cultural, and social projects for children, young people, and communities across the provinces of Lecco, Monza-Brianza, and Bergamo.
The camp takes place in the forest surrounding Cascina Rapello in Aizurro di Airuno, near Lecco, and runs over two consecutive nine-day sessions — from 9 to 17 July and from 19 to 27 July 2024. Each session welcomes approximately 40 young people aged 14 to 18, drawn from across Europe, making it an international experience that adds a multicultural dimension to an already rich programme.
Living Together, Learning Together
The organisational logic of the camp is deliberately communal and participatory. Participants are divided into small groups, each with rotating daily responsibilities: preparing breakfast, assisting in the kitchen, collecting wood, cleaning up, reporting on the day’s activities. Everyone contributes to the maintenance of the camp, and through this shared labour, something important happens: young people learn that self-organisation, mutual care, and responsibility are not abstract values but daily practices.
Each morning begins with an activity — sporting, constructive, or artistic — that starts at 9:30. Lunch is always prepared with the participation of the group. Afternoons are devoted to games and short treks; once a week, a full-day excursion takes the group to discover the natural and scenic richness of the surrounding territory. In the evenings, after dinner, everyone gathers around the fire for music, games, and simply listening to the sounds of the forest.
Throughout the camp, participants make many of the things they need: sustainable soaps and detergents, bread and pizza with organic flour, and vegetables harvested directly from Cascina Rapello’s garden. Artistic, creative, and theatrical workshops are woven throughout, and the forest itself — its inhabitants, its rhythms, its ecosystem — is a constant presence and teacher.
A Mixed Educational Model
Liberi Sogni has codified their educational approach as a “Mixed Model” — an integration of different frameworks applied according to the specific developmental needs of the moment. These include ecopsychology, ecotuning, biophilia, outdoor training, active citizenship principles, Freire pedagogy, Dewey’s learning by doing, the Montessori method, Feuerstein’s mediated learning experience, and neuropedagogy. The richness of this theoretical foundation is not academic exercise: it translates directly into how educators observe, accompany, and challenge young people throughout the nine days.
One operator for every seven to eight participants ensures close, personalised accompaniment. The Liberi Sogni staff are present 24 hours a day, combining professional experience in environmental education with genuine relational commitment.
Relevance for Sustainable Learning
As one participant put it: “I don’t know about the others but to me it felt like being in paradise — it is a way of life that makes you think a lot about everything, and makes you realise that even modern kids can fit in very well on a meadow without toilets, without a bathtub, without beds and without worrying about designer clothes and the opinion of others.” The camp connects to SDGs 3, 11, 12, 14, and 15, and represents one of the most complete examples of transformative sustainability education in the Sustainable Learning collection.
Website: liberisogni.org
Contact: crazylienza@liberisogni.org
