students from Oulu and EVS-volunteers:

!NEWS: This Project have been conducted from October 2010 to Jully 2011 and is now in stand-by, with eventually a continuation in the next years (NOT CONFIRMED YET). 

Please refer to email of the leader of this project (11jozf@gmail.com) if you want to find out more informations about a possible continuation of Stone-Age and Wilderness-Living Project in Finland.

With all my wishes of your interest in this website,

Joseph Favre-Felix.

dear Students from Oulu, dear EVS-volunteers,

I would like to inform you about a project that is happening near Oulu!

This project is about living and learning Stone Age and surviving skills...

The aim of the project is to offer the possibility for volunteers to

learn and experience in the wilds:

• lake ancestral fishing techniques

• wild food harvesting (plants, berries, mushrooms)

• surviving basic skills

• handcrafting from natural surrounding materials

• initiations to stone-age primitive technologies

•  group solidarity and teamwork in hard conditions

•  some nomadic ancient rhythmic of living

There will be in Yli-ii Kierikki Stone Age Centre volunteers from many

countries coming to learn Stone Age skills!! (For example in

October-November camp, 6 volunteers, from France, Korea, Germany, Greece, Nederland)

So if you have a motivation about learning and practicing nature

skills, you can come to join us anytime, especially on weekends!

You need to bring your own food that must be in big consequent quantities... You can also choose to give us 5euros per day of staying and eat the same food that we cook !

You will live a very primitive experience, an international sharing

experience, and a cold one too:). It is a place of experimentation, with good and bad surprises, with the building of a group, with the notion of work, volunteering, and flexible expectations... 

Wheater might be very cold, very dark, work tiring some days... So a strong will and motivation is very important to go over it! 

Our project proposes experimenting stone age technologies, as well as participating in different works that have to be done. Work can be collecting wood, cutting wood, collecting stones...etc. So depending on the day you come, you will have to adapt yourself to share with us our daily program of activities/work.

The climate: The weather in Finland is quite unpredictable. But The winter is very very cold, probably 

the coldest af all Europe... Usually in winter, the average minimum temperature (the extremes can be much colder) in Oulu region is -14*C. We hope you will get psychologically ready for beeing most of the time outside and sleeping in houses without heatings in these very challenging conditions!

How to get to Yli-Ii:  It is possible to travel between Oulu and Yli-Ii by bus on weekdays, The bus does not drive to the Stone Age Centre but in the Yli-Ii village (5 kilometres from the Stone Age Centre), so you will need to walk or bike from there. Bus timetables (also in English) can be found at www.matkahuolto.fi.

We are sleeping in a place without any heating and its easy -20 Celcius in the night INSIDE THE HOUSE, so you really need to pay extra attention to your equipement list and sleeping bag

We are all day outside BY THE SAME TEMPERATURES as well!

All you need, if you want to visit our camps, is

- ALL INSURANCE AND ID PAPERS IF SOMETHING HAPPENS SO THAT YOU WOULD

NEED MEDICAL HELP

- enough food for you during the time of your stay, or 5eur pe day of stay.

-A pair of forest skiis OR a pair of snowshoes.

-a sleeping bag suitable for VERY COLD TEMPERATURES ( -20 Celcius during the night!)

- camping mattress

- a backpack

- eventually a tent (if you have one, bring one)

- practical, warm and waterproof clothes, that can get dirty

- very good winter jacket

- many WOOLEN pullovers

- a good warm pant for winter and snow

- one or two warm (wool) underpants

- at least 4 pairs of wool socks

- 2 warm winter hats

- two pairs of gloves including one warm pair of MITTENS (much warmer that normal gloves) for cold, and one pair of working gloves (if possible waterproof)

- 1 pair of warm hiking/walking  winter boots, for snow.

- 1 pair of rubber boots.

- Gaiters for snow (very important)

- a head lamp and batteries.

-anything that you might think could be connected to the project

(surviving stuff, stone age material, etc...)

- a fishing licence if you want to join our fishing activities

- a bike would be great because the stone age museum is quite far from the village center!

- and a great smile!

IT IS VERY VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU HAVE ALL THIS MATERIAL.

IN SOME PREVIOUS CAMPS SOME VOLUNTEERS DIDNT HAD ALL OF IT, BECAUSE THEY THOUGHT "Oh we will manage it anyway" AND IT HANDICAPED ALL THE GROUP A LOT.

WE CANNOT MAKE OUR ACTIVITIES IF YOU DONT BRING ALL OF THIS WITH YOU.

TAKE THIS LIST EXTREMELY SERIOUSLY, PLEASE. EVERY ELEMENT IS NEEDED.

I hope you will bring with you ALSO ideas of games, maybe music instruments, or anything that can make our long nights enliven and joyfull

Do you already know exactly when you are interested to visit?

If yes, i will tell you where the meeting place would be the best!

Thanks for answer!

Joseph 

  To inscribe, mail to 11jozf@gmail.com

Partners: ALLIANSSI (Suomen Nuorisoyhteistyö), KIERIKKI STONE AGE CENTRE.