The Gathering’s theme follows Seton’s own summary of his program:

Something to Do, Something to Think About, Something to Enjoy in the Woods, with a thought always toward character building and physical fitness.

The Gathering’s objectives are to:

1.  Create an international coalition of Woodcraft practitioners.

2.  Develop new friendships and connections across the world.

3.  Share Woodcraft best practices.

4.   Identify ways to update traditional Woodcraft practices to reduce/eliminate Amerindian cultural appropriation and replace these practices with cooperation, respect, and insights from within each organization’s own cultural roots.

We invite representatives from all groups that use Woodcraft principles to participate!

There will be four sessions across the weekend: Culture, Tradition, Nature and Community.

Each session will be two hours of moderated online presentations that will showcase the most creative presentations within the session topic. The sessions will not be back-to-back but scheduled at different times of day to accommodate as many time zones as possible. Between sessions, participants will be encouraged to participate in informal online discussion rooms, view more presentations on the website, or take on the challenges provided at the end of each session.

Sessions each have a different focus, and therefore have different presentation format requirements.

Culture

This session is about how you or your group identifies as practicing Woodcraft principles. Consider answering questions such as: What is your Woodcraft culture? What symbols, icons, and special clothing, if any, do you use? What Woodcraft activities, such as camping or making handicrafts, do you engage in? When and how often are your activities are done? Is your group part of another program? How do you get and keep youth engaged?

The Culture session will feature a selection of short videos showing how woodcraft works across the world. All submission clips will be published on the website where participants can check them out at their convenience whether they are part of the formal session or not.

Tradition

This session focuses on your group’s Woodcraft history. It honors the past from both group and individual perspectives. Questions you might think about answering include: What are the roots of your organization? How do you recognize, respect, and honor Woodcraft heritage? What traditions do you follow that keep Woodcraft alive? What experiences have you had that compel you to share Woodcraft with others?

The Tradition session will feature storytellers with inspirational individual and panel presentations. Q and A time will be allocated as needed.

Nature

The Nature session focuses on how your group enjoys, respects, and cares for the natural world. There will be two discussion tracks occurring simultaneously: the “Wood” and the “Craft”. The “Wood” track incorporates topics around Nature itself: flora and fauna knowledge, nature/wildlife protection, environmental studies/education, or giving a virtual tour of the place your group camps or hikes. The “Craft” track incorporates topics around human skills and abilities to enjoy and spend time in Nature: survival skills, handicrafts from nature resources (knitting knots), pioneering, camping, cooking, hiking, or other activities.

You might be inspired by presentations that show how youth and children enjoy and learn about their natural surroundings, or nature games.  How is caring for nature infused into your everyday life? 

For the Craft track ideas might be:

Techniques for hiking, camping in the forest, cooking over an open fire, and/or making handicrafts using natural resources.

For the Nature session, we are looking for nature-focused games, displays of the flora and fauna in your area (perhaps a short video of a hike), instructions on how to make a handicraft or a recipe for a special food you cook in camp.

Community

The Community session focuses on building and maintaining Community. How does your group recruit members and select leaders? What aspects of your program support personal growth?

As the last session, we will also ask for your help to identify how we build and maintain this International Community. What topics are you interested in continuing to explore? How and how often will focus groups communicate with each other and with the larger group?

During registration you will be asked to sign a permission form to allow your presentations to be made available for viewing during and after the event for all participants to view and download.