Peripheral LINKs presents: Empowerment for changemakers retreat
📅 Where: Haltian pappila, Pälkäne (Haltiantie 503, 36760 Luopioinen)
🗺️ When: Thu-Su 12.-15.06.2025
Do you have a vision you'd love to bring to life, but feel too overwhelmed to get started? Do you already have a project and feel alone with it, like no-one around understands you? You’ve come to the right place! This retreat is a space to reconnect with your purpose, gain practical tools, and find a supportive community of like-minded changemakers. Sign up for the retreat here!
From frozenness to action, from vision to reality
This retreat covers topics like the practice of Active Hope, project design and communicating about your project. We begin with Active Hope—transforming fear and overwhelm into inspiration and action based on the work of Joanna Macy, "The Work that Reconnects". Together, we will acknowledge the challenges we face while cultivating resilience, creativity, and the courage to move forward.
Moving on, we’ll explore how to design, share, and sustain meaningful projects—balancing vision with action. We'll work on long-term topics like vision, mission and aims, as well as bring the planning down to action level by designing our next steps using the Design Web.
You'll learn about communication-related topics offline and online (digital permaculture), and we'll also discuss issues like how to avoid confrontations growing into full-blown conflicts. Throughout the course there is time for deep reflection and connection with each other 🌳💡
After the retreat, all participants are eglible to request extra free coaching to help you keep the ball rolling. There is a lot more about the content towards the end of the page - please keep scrolling down!
For you, whatever the stage or season of your project
Whether you're at the idea stage or already working on a project, this retreat will help you clarify your path, build resilience, and take tangible steps forward—all while surrounded by inspiring people who share your values. No matter if your project is writing a book, starting a community farm or an ecovillage, founding your own association or business, designing your own life to be more regenerative and based on your values or something totally different, this retreat will support you on your path.
Join us to turn overwhelm into empowerment, reconnect with your inner motivation, and bring your vision to life in a way that feels sustainable, impactful, and true to you.
Teachers and coaches
Guiding you during the retreat are
🌱 Kaisa Käärmemaa, artist and coach, will lead the Work that Reconnects / Active Hope workshop
🌱 Kathy Otto, teacher and specialist in communication, organization design and project design from Gran Canaria will guide us in these topics
🌱 Lumia Huhdanpää-Jais is a permaculture designer and an communications entrepreneur, who will share her knowledge about communication and permaculture design tools
🌱 Dominik Jais is the author of "Digital Permaculture" and will share his decades-long experience in online communications, ethical IT and permaculture design.
Practical info
Location: Haltian pappila, Pälkäne (Haltiantie 503, 36760 Luopioinen)
Time: Thu-Sun 12.-15.06.2025
Location and arrival
Haltian Pappila is a wonderful old vicarage located in the middle of nature in Haltia village, Pälkäne. Haltian Pappila serves usually as a care home for the elderly, but is very suitable for courses like our retreat. It's best reached with your own car, but it can be reached by bus from Tampere.
Please let us know if you plan to come by bus so we can arrange pick-up from Luopioinen bus station.
Schedule
- (Wed 11.6. arrival at Haltian pappila starting from 15.00, welcome circle at 18.00, light supper together)
- Thu-Fri 12.-13.6. Active hope workshop
- Sat 14.6. Social permaculture and project design
- Sun 15.6. Communication offline and online, goodbye circle
- (Mon 16.6. Reflections on the weekend, time for personal tutoring, day ends with lunch)
If your schedule is tight, you can choose to arrive Thursday morning and leave Sunday evening, or come on Wednesday and leave on Monday - as it suits you best.
Price
Whole retreat including all teaching and workshops, all meals and snacks and of course lakeshore sauna, with different accommodation options
- 130 € no accommodation (for people living or staying nearby) or bring your tent (bring your own tent & gear)
- 180 € accommodation in the common dorm (mixed, mattress available, please bring your own sleeping bag or sheets)
- 250 € accommodation in shared 2 person rooms in the main house (per person)
Food
Included is simple, vegetarian, nutritious food: breakfast, soup lunch, afternoon snack and dinner. Vegan/gluten free/allergy aware available, just let us know what you need.
Coaching
After the retreat, all participants are eligible to request extra free coaching to help you with your project and keep the ball rolling.
More about the content
Active hope workshop
“The Work That Reconnects” is an interactive workshop model developed for over four decades by eco-philosopher and activist Joanna Macy. It has been taught to thousands of people worldwide and is designed to transform fear and despair into inspiration and empowerment.
This workshop, led by artist and coach Kaisa Käärmemaa, utilizes dialogue, movement, rituals, play, and connection with nature. It inspires and empowers us in these times of planetary crisis. Often, we suppress our hopelessness, fear, and grief about the state of the world. However, ignoring these emotions does not make them disappear; instead, they often lead to underlying anxiety. The Work of Active Hope provides tools to face these emotions and challenges, helping us strengthen our connection with ourselves, each other, and all living beings. Engaging in this work is essential for us to participate in the ongoing collective transformation—from a society that destroys life to one that sustains it.
The work revitalizes us and gives us strength and resilience to fully live amidst climate and other crises. During these two first days of the retreat, we will go through the entire spiral of The Work That Reconnects, from gratitude to honoring our pain, leading to empowerment.
Social permaculture and project design workshop
This workshop by Kathy, Lumia and Dominik provides a structured yet creative space to explore the essential elements of designing impactful projects that are in line with our values. The workshop will dive into into advancing your projects, and also present use cases, gaining insights from successful projects. We'll be using the Compass which is a great tool for defining project cornerstones like vision, values, and practical goals. Using it and other tools like the Design Web we will navigate the process of turning ideas into clear, actionable plans.
After this day, participants will have a clearer vision of their projects, practical tools for implementation, and a supportive network of like-minded changemakers.
Communications workshop
The last part of the retreat is designed to help participants to avoid some communication pitfalls within their teams and/or while sharing about their project offline and online. Dominik, Lumia and Kathy will guide us to topics like networking and collaboration and explore strategies for effective communication, conflict resolution, and team structures, equipping participants with skills to navigate the human dynamics of collaboration.
We'll look into things like how culture can have an impact on communication, and find ways to build bridges over gaps in our communication. We will also dive into the digital toolbox, discussing ethical usage of IT and also marketing-type communication: how to make decisions that balance sustainability and efficiency. Ethical questions around influence, ownership, and power dynamics in digital spaces will be key themes throughout the session.
By the end of this day, participants will have a deeper understanding of communication and how it can help us with our projects. You'll also have ideas on how to share your work with clarity and integrity, using tools that support both visibility and long-term impact.
Sign up for the retreat here! We'd love to have you there! 🌱
This retreat as all of the activities within the LINK project are co-funded by the European Union. Thank you!