Looking back at the Årø Baltic Sea Summer Camp (15.-21. September 2019)

At the beginning of November 2016, it was announced that the Robert Bosch Comprehensive School would be launching another project and Årø, the well-known and beloved little Danish island and an integral part of our school and the school career of each student, will be given another facet: Årø goes international.

Responsible for this are Nick Krichevsky and Dennis Stahl, who have been putting years of work in developing the international camps. And now, for the second time, they have successfully inspired upper level high school students that it would be a great idea to take part in this camp.

The 14th and 15th of September were foreseen for the arrival of the different groups and in contrast to the structured procedure of the rest of the week, one could describe these two days as quite chaotic. One after another the different groups arrived and at some point nobody was really clear who belonged to which country.

However, after the first cold night and the first day of the project week, structure returned to the camp. Breakfast, lunch and dinner (everything was prepared fresh by the cooking team! Yummy!) was always at the same time, in the mornings we worked on large projects and in the afternoon there were various workshops. General topic: getting to know the Baltic Sea, and everything associated with it. This included topics such as creating a large model of the island, analyzing the pollution of the coast and processing natural ingredients found on the island into edible food. A film for the Tolerance Festival, which took place at the end of the project week in Hildesheim, was also produced as an international contribution to the topic of tolerance. Another main topic during the week included the topics of climate and environmental protection and the related topic of more sustainability in and out of the camp. Many workshops and some of the projects were run by guests from “outside” who paid a visit to Årø.

The week was spent working and thinking, sharing ideas and conducting interviews. Boredom never came up and the different evening programs brought us all together to enjoy the end of a great day. And as the stars came out it was just a matter of time until a group of us would huddle around the ever-burning bonfire, leading inevitably to yet another all-nighter.

The presentations of the various projects took place during the whole afternoon on Friday. Thanks to outstanding organization, everyone had the chance to see or hear about every other project. Posters, models, experiments and films were used to transmit what was worked out during the week.

The Årø Baltic Sea Summer Camp 2019 ended with a final dinner together and early the next morning the groups made their way back home.

All in all, I was thrilled with the camp and I believe that I can speak for all participants.

At this point, I would like to thank all contributors on behalf of all participants in the camp, the cooking team, all workshop leaders, the organizers, supporters and contributing teachers, especially Nick Krichevsky, Dennis Stahl and Lisa Schinkel. Thank You!

Johanna Levers, camp participant