Our fantastic trip to Halmstad, SWEDEN, to the School of Health and Welfare

Within this great ERASMUS+ Project #ImprovingEducationinAnimalAssistedServices we had the opportunity to travel and do a Job Shadowing in Halmstad, School of Health and Welfare.

We arrived in this wonderful town in Sweden by train after flying to Copenhagen, Denmark. Their transportation system is amazing!! There, we stayed at this wonderful little house in a very nice and quiet place where we will going to meet Henrika Jormfeldt, a professor of Nursing, and Margareta Hakanson, an expert on Equine Assisted Services from OHI (the Swedish organization Equine-assisted Interventions Group). and author of books.

They were great hosts and shared with us their work in this School, and their Equestrian Centres. We spent a whole day talking and looking at examples of including horses to support health and learning, regardless of physical or mental disability. They presented us with their programs with schizophrenic and addicted clients, and we were challenged to present our organization and our work in this field in Portugal.

Together, we began sharing ideas and preparing curriculum content about EAS for individuals with diverse needs, ages, and challenges to be discussed later with the rest of the organization staff.

We had the opportunity to participate in the Nordic Seminar, and that was an amazing experience, as we were able to hear practices from people from different Scandinavian countries, regarding equine-assisted interventions that presented us the latest insights about training methods in the field of sustainable health. This was totally new for us, as no one is teaching about this in Portugal.

The last day at Halmstad School, we had a round table discussion, not only with our mentors but also with others. We listened to their discussions and brainstorming sessions, focusing on expanding ideas to create new educational approaches in Scandinavia.

This has definitely improved our knowledge about health services in green environments.

All conclusions and perspectives will now be discussed with the other member from our organization

We have already started working on the Educational Material and Preparation of the Curriculum for the international Course in EAS.

THANK YOU SO MUCH, DEAR HENRIKA AND MARGARETA, WE ALREADY MISS BEING THERE!!!