Every year at the Rieneck Scout Castle in Germany approximately 100 international scouts meet up to improve their skills and share their talents with each other. You will gain new perspectives, creativity and enthusiasm that will give you and your scout group back home fresh ideas for activities. The aim of IMWe is to give leaders of Guide and Scout groups the opportunity to explore their creative
talents in a setting free of their usual responsibilities, within a set theme. IMWe is prepared on behalf of the German VCP by an international group of scouts who meet several times a year to organize the workshop, which is always held around Easter each year. The workshop lasts for 8 or 9 days and always has a certain theme. All Guides and Scouts of 17 years plus are welcome at IMWe. The objectives
IMWe aims to bring together scout leaders worldwide
• for an uplifting experience
• for new motivation and ideas
• for the work at home
• to exchange ideas, experiences and skills
• to establish international connections (for future exchange projects, international activities etc.)
• to practise intercultural communication and living
• to stimulate awareness of their own and other cultures
• to reflect and present the own cultural background
• to train soft skills: communication, team work, presentation
• to learn traditional skills
• to promote creative work, arts, crafts and music in scout groups as cultural learning
• to train methods of theme-oriented youth work
The theme plays an important role
To set an extraordinary atmosphere every IMWe has a theme and a storyline and the participants are asked to dress up in costumes based on the theme. The organization team makes up a plot and the theme is involved in several programme activities with each teamer having to act one character in the storyline. The participants themselves are active observers, although they manage to influence the plot as the week passes. Workshops
At each year at IMWe several workshops are offered to the participants in which they will spend their entire morning. The workshops differ from year to year but always focus on creativeness, such as painting, acting, making music, inventing things, telling stories, and dancing. Throughout the week the workshops prepare something and set up a show at the final evening, displaying the creative work of the week. The teamers make effort in inventing new and special workshops every year so that one can go as often to IMWe as he desires and still always learns something new. Last few years had featured workshops like bookbinding, Flying Objects, theatre, music performance, puppet making, photography etc. Interest Groups
Interest Groups or IGs as they are commonly called are short activities prepared and organized by the participants themselves. Everyone participating in IMWe is offered to teach the others any special talent of his, some customs of his nation or just anything that comes to mind. The Day Out
One day during the middle of the week is called the Day Out, where the scouts go to a nearby town and bring scouting to the world by fulfilling tasks made by the teamers. This encourages the scouts to share their culture and scouting experience with local Germans, and makes them work together regardless of their nationality.
