Hello Everyone,
I have organised this page to bring some, hopefully, useful information together for you, all in one easily accessible place.
Please take some time to read through the information provided as this will support both your preparation and ours to ensure the Workshop runs as smoothly as possible and you get the most out of your time with us here.
AS A VERY MINIMUM PLEASE COMPLETE THE MEDICAL QUESTIONNAIRE AND REVIEW THE KIT LIST FOR ESSENTIAL ITEMS
If there are any updates or new information I will post them here, and message out to you by email to let you know there have been changes or additions.
I hope this works ok for everyone and I very much look forward to seeing you soon in our beautiful mountains and working with you soon.
Le TÉNAOU @ 1435m. One of my regular outdoor office spaces :).
I am very excited to share with you what I feel privileged to have access to, with the belief that this wonderful space can have a significant and positive impact for all of those who choose to engage with it.
Kit List
Here you will find our suggestions for a kit list for the Outdoor part of our Workshop together. There are some Recommended items and some Essential items so please take a look through this is good time to ensure you can have everything you need.
Medical Questionnaire and Fitness for Hiking in Mountainous areas
Due to the nature of the Workshop, an element I will have already discussed with you individually (or plan to if not already) is around the outdoor element of these Workshops. The design of our outdoor interactions is to allow us engage with Nature as a ‘Thinking Partner’ and to enhance the Coaching process for the benefit of everyone.
We are not looking to take you mountain climbing or Peak bagging, and as such our routes will be tailored to the fitness and ability of the group. We will be working as a Team during the 2 days to ensure everyone’s engagement and participation and will be supportive of everyone both mentally and physically whilst we are here.
The make up of each day will be similar, with roughly an hour’s walking to start and to get us to a suitable location, a 60-90 minute Coaching session together, another hour’s walk to get us to a lunch spot, further Coaching time and then around an hour’s walk to get back to our van, with some further Coaching time allocated during this walk. We are therefore planning roughly three hours of walking each day (albeit split into 3 parts) and plan to cover between 7-9km in this time. It is hard not to take in elevation when walking here out here and would anticipate between 400-600m of elevation within each days’ walk.
With this in mind, we would ask you to complete the following Medical Questionnaire in order to give us the information we require to help look after the group and keep you safe during the workshop.
Insurance and Health Care
Please be aware that Health Care and medical services in France are paid for services, re-imbursed by the state at 70% of the cost. There is therefore usually a 30% personal liability towards the cost of medical care for French residents.
If you are visiting from the UK, I believe that you can still use your EHIC card until it expires or you require a new GHIC card if a previous EHIC has expired. Here is a link that I found that might be useful. Applying for healthcare cover abroad (GHIC and EHIC) – NHS (www.nhs.uk)
PLEASE NOTE: EHIC AND GHIC CARDS ONLY COVER THE NORMAL STATE RE-IMBURSEMENT OF 70% OF HEALTHCARE COSTS IN FRANCE. We would therefore strongly recommend you find and take out further private medical insurance that will cover the remaining 30% of medical fees that will not be re-imbursed via the EHIC / GHIC system. These are usually not very expensive for a short trip but can be very beneficial in the event of an illness or accident in France.
Research and Feedback
As part of the Pilot and offer you have engaged with here, I have asked for your participation in providing me with structured feedback about the Workshop and its organisation. I would also be very keen to engage you in some research into the connection between Coaching and the Outdoors and Nature. I would therefore like to ask you to complete a questionnaire prior to joining us on the Workshop, and then also following you participation in the two days.
To make this as straightforward as possible for you, I have created the following Link To Pre-Workshop Questionnaire and Research Questions that I would appreciate you completing before your arrival. I will share a Post Workshop Feedback and Research Questions Link for you after your participation in the Workshop.
I will also be asking for your verbal feedback during the two days and would like to invite your thoughts and feelings in the most open and honest manner possible, as this is a deep learning experience for me too.
Environmental Impact and our Activities
I am conscious that my work here, and ours collectively when we come together, can not be done without some environmental impact. I am still in the process of defining how I am going to work with Nature as a ‘Partner’ and what this means for me in terms of giving back. I am conscious that we can still achieve a positive environmental impact as well as potentially negative impacts from the likes of travel, materials, outdoor kit etc.
Whilst out in the mountain environment, we will guide you in any specific activities to limit our impact as much as possible, and this has been thought about as part of our Workshop planning. I remain very open to suggestions as to how we can both limit our negative impact, and provide positive impact to the environment and our surrounds in the planning, preparations and undertaking of these activities.
I would like to make a short note here to ask that you also consider your environmental impact as part of your engagement with me and the workshop you are attending. My hope is that by working with Nature, and by us benefitting from connecting with it, we are already enhancing our awareness and therefore our thoughtfulness around our environmental impact and maybe the choices we make more widely.
WORKSHOP TRAVEL CARBON FOOTPRINT – For all of my Coaching Outdoor Workshops, my intention is to calculate the Carbon Travel Footprint for the participants’ main travel components and to highlight them here:
CARBON FOOTPRINT SEPTEMBER WORKSHOP – Calculated via SCIF’s Carbon Calculator
CARBON FOOTPRINT OCTOBER WORKSHOP – Calculated via SCIF’s Carbon Calculator
Following some research, I have found this Organisation MIEUXDONNER.ORG who have, through their own research and that of others, identified The Clean Air Task Force (CATF) as one of the most cost effective organisations in the world tackling climate change.
As such, I will be donating an offsetting carbon charge equivalent to the above calculations for each and every Workshop that I run. I appreciate that there challenges and controversies around Carbon Offsetting, and I remain entirely open to ideas and suggestions of other ways to support climate action and reducing the impact of any of my professional activities in support of nature, diversity and climate impact.
Association for Coaching Code of Ethics
As a qualified Coach, I am affiliated with the Association for Coaching as my main professional body. There is a specific Code of Ethics that I adhere to as part that association. You can find a copy of the AC Code of Ethics HERE.
If for any reason you are dissatisfied with any aspect of my professional conduct in relation to Coaching, then you can find a copy of the Association for Coaching complaints Policy and procedure by following this link:
AC Complaints Policy – Association for Coaching
Institute of Outdoor Learning Code of Conduct
In a similar vein to the Association for Coaching for my Coaching practice, I am also a Member of the Institute of Outdoor Learning covering the outdoor elements of our programmes. So I also adhere to their Code of Conduct which you can find HERE.
Food and Drink
Food and drinks are not included in the price of the Pilot Workshop and to some degree I was anticipating that we would discuss this and agree together how you would like the food to work. I realise however there will not be much time to organise certain elements and so would like to propose the following (where we share the cost split between ourselves) :
WEDNESDAY EVENING MEAL – I organise an evening meal for us all to have together on the Wednesday evening – I will make this simple, healthy and vegetarian for ease and will propose we eat outside around 7pm weather permitting.
BREAKFAST, THURSDAY, FRIDAY & SATURDAY – I do a shop for breakfast ingredients to include cereal, fruit, yoghurt, eggs, bread, croissants, tea and coffee for people to help themselves to in the Chalet Kitchen each morning.
LUNCH THURSDAY & FRIDAY – I will do similar to Breakfast and shop for ingredients for people to make their own packed lunch and snacks for during the day that you can then take with you (ham, cheese, peanuts, cereal bars, fruit, nuts, bread)
THURSDAY PM EVENING MEAL – I will book a table at our local Hotel restaurant for you. It is only 300m walk from here and you can then choose your own dinner options there. The cost for their 3 course set menu is usually 18euro.
FRIDAY PM EVENING MEAL – we get a take-away, either from one of our local suppliers or Pizza or something similar. We will have time to discuss this on Wednesday when we get together.
Please do let me know directly by email a) if you have any allergies or dietary requirements to take into considerations here, b) if you would prefer to do something differently to the above.
I hope this information is useful for you in your preparation for the workshop and making the most out of our time together and I am very excited and looking forward to seeing you in a few weeks time.
Many thanks and Kind regards,
Damian