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It’s been rather too long since my last post for many reasons, some personal and some due to the ongoing Covid crisis. We followed this with a very busy time in the Summer and Autumn of 2021 and early 2022 delivering the COOPT Certificate of Best Practice in Outdoor Play Therapy to 73 participants, including a number of overseas attendees from Israel, Ireland, Canada, The United States, Australia and the Netherlands. We have been delighted to meet everyone and appreciate all the affirmative feedback we have had and the constructive comments on some small changes we could make.
One of the highlights for us was finally being able to meet face to face with course members both in Northumberland, hosted by the Tracie Faa-Thompson at Turn About Pegasus and at our usual haunt, Bedminster Quaker Meeting House in Bristol.
We have also been giving some time to considering how we move forward in 2022 and have agreed to continue with the networking aspect of COOPT as a membership organisation, with a modest annual joining fee and two or three network meetings a year and to continue to run the COOPT Certificate of Best Practice in Outdoor Play Therapy through our training arm which may also offer other specific COOPT courses or those delivered by our members that we feel we can endorse.
However, COOPT is now at a crossroads. We have lost three valued members of the steering group; Julie West, Leona Johnson and Helen Rook (who has recently published Urban Wild, pictured left ) and have welcomed Shuna Mercer and Leone Ellis as new members and course facilitators. But we are a small team with a growing community and much of the work of COOPT is voluntary. We would now like to expand our Steering Group and particularly need help with our website and social media presence, communications and general admin.
The Steering Group generally meets online around 4 -6 times a year with additional meetings if activities and courses are being planned. If you are interested in joining the group, please contact us at cooptuk@gmail.com and briefly tell us a little about yourself and how you feel you can support the work of COOPT.
We hope you will all feel you can join us on the next stage of development for COOPT and will be circulating details of the membership process in due course. We continue to have a presence on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/COOPTUK so will also post updates on training etc there.
And finally, we continue to plan for a face to face networking campover event and will publish full details once we can confirm the dates and venue. Until then, take care and spend whatever time you can continuing to develop your own connection to nature and all she has to offer us.
