Duha Velka Medvedice - your Czech partner for international youth exchanges

Duha Velka Medvedice – nature, sports, amateur art and fun

Duha Velka Medvedice, founded 1983, is a local group of Duha Association via which we are members of the International Young Naturefriends.

We are an authentic club of cool people preparing rainbow-coloured programmes for active leisure time of teenagers and young ones. At least once a month we organize an outdoor weekend event mostly with hiking, sports, amateur art activities or just fun.  Each summer, we organize a two week teen camp with an attractive theme (like Pirates of the Carribean or Prehistory). The most favourite event we organize is Commandos, a simulation of an army training naturally in forests. Recently, there is about 20 active people in our local group.

 Since 2008, we have been active in international youth exchanges. With our German partner, Naturfreundejugend Württemberg we organized a middle-age camp in Czechia (August 2008), an Easter event in Prague (April 2009), a prehistoric camp in Germany (August 2009) and a recent activity, which was Commandos in the end of October 2009 in Germany.

 For the next year we are planning an international camp again which may be organized in co-operation with a German partner, Die Falken in north Germany.

A Czech-German prehistory in the land of neanderthalers

August, 2009

A prehistoric youth exchange shaped as a Czech – German youth camp organized by Duha Velka Medvedice (Czechia) and Naturfreundejugend Württemberg (Germany) took place in the first two weeks of August nearby the village Stetten am kalten Markt in south-west Germany. Nearly 35 teenagers and other 15 animators and supporters from both countries spent together an interesting event based in the NF House “Donautal” in a 90 mins distance from the German – Swiss borders. The main aim of the program was to get closer to the way how prehistoric people lived and thought by using various games and creative activities accompanied by four trips. The most interesting might have been that one to the Lake Constance and the Monkey hill at Salem. The other one was to the archaeological centre in Blaubeuren where participants were shown a lot of the prehistoric style of living and could try to make some artifacts and see a cave where our ancestors lived.

The both groups of participants mixed together quickly. It must have been caused by dividing both nationalities to mixed teams (so called tribes), which were competing in games and activities. The success of the event has been acknowledged when the participants spontaneously changed contacts to each other and were interested in next common activity – the fall event called Commandos that is going to happen in the Bavarian part of Czech forest. Thank the good ghosts’ protections we were lucky about weather and injuries.

This year’s Czech – German youth exchange project has been organized after the positive experiences from the common CZ – D camp nearby Opava, Czechia in summer 2008. The contemporary project follows and has been divided to three parts: in spring, 2009 the "Winds of Change" event took place in Prague, Czechia, the just finished "Prehistorik" camp in Germany and the third part is the outdoor survival course   "Commandos: Catch up!" in Bavarian mountains.

The activities have been supported by Tandem– the co-ordination centre for Czech-German youth exchanges, Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport of the Czech Republic and the municipality of Olomouc, Czechia.

A short overview of photographs from the just finished camp Prehistoric can be found here.

Feel free to contact us:

Duha Velka Medvedice / Schweitzerova 70 / CZ 779 00 Olomouc / Czech Republic

+420 602 431 149  velka(at)medvedice.net  www.medvedice.net

Whom to contact

Hynek Pečinka

chairman of Duha Velka Medvedice

referee for international activities