Keynote Speaker

Carrine Ribe Fernee is a senior researcher at the Department of Child and Adolescent Mental Health at Sørlandet hospital and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Health and Sport Sciences at the University of Agder in Kristiansand, Norway. Together with her team of clinicians, researchers, and collaborating partners in the Agder region of Norway, they have become a national hub for developing nature- and activity-based interventions for children, youth, and families across health, school, and leisure settings, where the collaborative action research project Where Wild Things Grow is one example. Carina is responsible for a post-graduate study in “Nature-based therapeutic work”, in addition to research, training, and supervision. Carina was involved in founding the Nordic Outdoor Therapy Network (NOTN) in 2016 and the Norwegian Outdoor Therapy Association (NFUT) in 2022. She is a former co-chair of the International Association for Adventure and Nature-based Therapy (former ATIC) and perhaps some of you will recognise her as one of the convenors of the 9th International Adventure Therapy Conference/3rd Gathering for Adventure Therapy in Europe (9IATC/3GATE) in Norway in June 2022.

Keynote Speaker

LEJO is a pioneering Belgian youth organization working with youth at risk (12 – 25 yrs). Their trademark is a process-oriented and experiential approach with youngsters, in the spirit of ‘grass does not grow by pulling it’.

About 60 counselors, youth workers/coaches and 150 young volunteers work at LEJO. They reach 3000 young people, crossing different fields of leisure, education, well-being and labor.

Their main goal is to create safe spaces as a therapeutical context to grow. They like outreaching, finding youngsters where they like to hang out: Schools, public parks, town squares …

More and more, they see themselves leaving the comfort of their safe spaces to get involved in society, along with youngsters. Joining the conversation on education, inequality and discrimination, by supporting young people to bring their perspective.

That’s why they are excited to join GATE, bringing youngsters’ voices about growth and what LEJO’s therapeutical settings have meant for them.

Looking forward to meeting you there!

“In the beginning I was so young and such a stranger to myself I hardly existed. I had to go out into the world and see it and hear it and react to it, before I knew at all who I was, what I was, what I wanted to be.” — Mary Oliver, Upstream