THE VALE FORUM
FIVE DAYS · FIFTY PEOPLE
Five days on a thatched farm estate outside Hamburg, and fifty of us to fill it. Maybe you've already done one of our courses; maybe this is your way in. Either way, five days to build something together.
Hosted by The VALE – a non-profit running leadership courses for young people across Europe since 2018.
01 — WHAT THIS IS
You're running teams or whole organisations now.
Often through screens, across borders, in three different time zones.
Nobody trained you for that version of the job.
This December, we're giving you the space to learn and teach.
Most of you have already done one of our courses. We kept the whole idea: the morning walks, the small group reflections, and the line one participant left in their evaluation: finding the flame of passion and inspiration within me, because it had been gone for a while.
The Forum is here for you to have a share of the ownership process. Fifty spots, drawn from everyone who has been through our courses. People from your year will sit in a room with the ones who had their VALE experience in 2019, and the ones who did last winter. Eight years of The VALE in one building… this has never actually happened before.
Same people. Together. In a much bigger room.
02 — HOW WE GOT HERE
We started as NBLC, the Nordic-Baltic Leadership Course, which then became The VALE. All throughout, two threads: the Courses, where most of us met, and the Symposiums, which took it public. In December they finally run together.
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03 — HOW IT WORKS
We've built the shape of the week, the methods, and the rhythm. Imagine a big room for an open space, but also parallel workshops. You bring the substance and experience. Our job is to hold the frame, feed you well, and make sure there's room to breathe.
WEDNESDAY TO FRIDAY
Two days of parallel sessions and Open Space. Bring one and run it, or just turn up to other people's. The good ones are usually about the awkward stuff: the argument that goes quiet on a call, a team that's never been in the same room, decisions where your values and your budget flatly disagree.
EVERY DAY
You meet the same few people at the end of every day. It's where the big sessions get turned into something you can use next week, and where the feedback comes from people with no reason to flatter you. If you've participated in one of our courses you'll recognise this model… one participant called it the most productive learning environment they'd been in.
SATURDAY
We take the substance and energy of the previous days into the city for the fifth edition of The VALE Symposium, a free public day of talks and workshops. Some of you will run something. Some will just go and enjoy it. Then we all come back and pull the day apart over dinner.
You'll write the real programme when you get there. Here's the sort of week we're setting up for. A fair bit of it will be your fault.
A conversation by the fire that opens on values and hybrid leadership and, two hours later, is somewhere far more personal. No rush.
A magic morning walk, out in the December cold before anyone has had breakfast, with the one person you'd been meaning to talk to properly all week.
A session on the thing you can't solve. Holding a team together when you only ever meet them as a grid of squares. Somebody in the room can recommend other tips than what you have tried.
Learning to build a virtual experience that isn't just another video call. Vibecoding, new tools or something completely different. Whoever proposes it decides.
A workshop based on your rules entirely. Describe your org chart in an interpretive dance or rehearse a dreaded conversation as a soap opera. It's all up to you.
The barn at eleven at night, somebody's questionable playlist, and karaoke in four languages that nobody present speaks natively.
Enough unstructured time to actually get to know people. Going by eight years of evaluations, that's the part you'll still be talking about next winter.
04 — THE PLACE
FREIBURG AN DER ELBE · LANDKREIS STADE
A thatched farm estate on the Elbe, an hour west of Hamburg. We all sleep, eat, and work in the same few buildings for five days. This is the part of the budget we did not economise on.
Venue photographs © Gut Schöneworth
Our main room is a converted apple barn. Over 120 square metres, ceilings up to 4.3 metres, daylight on both sides, and a thatched roof that regulates its own temperature. There's a second, smaller room for when the group splits.
Chef Matthias Pape cooks regional and seasonal — Galloway beef from up the road, apple juice pressed on the estate, cake baked in the house for the afternoon break. Sixteen Gault&Millau points and three toques back in 2005. Vegetarian and vegan are on the menu as well of course.
Their own website promises you can sleep with the window open. There's WiFi in every building too.
A beamed lounge with deep sofas, long tables outside, and a garden. It's a working farm estate that takes guests, and you'll feel the difference the moment you come up the drive.
For more information: gut-schoeneworth.de ↗
05 — WHO'S COMING
Fifty places out of the 131 people who have been through our courses, and the mixing is the point: 2018 in the same room as last winter's group. A handful of places go to youth workers and civil society people who haven't done The VALE Course yet.
Roughly 20 to 45, living in Europe, comfortable working in English.
If your course was years ago and you've lost touch with everyone, especially come.
IN THEIR WORDS
Word for word from our course evaluation forms.
I wonder how it is possible to mix a random group of people so very much fitting together.
Some took a step, some took a leap — but a step nonetheless.
I didn't think that this program would go so deep and that it would be so well thought out and constructive from day to day.
06 — APPLY
APPLICATIONS OPEN MONDAY
UNTIL APPLICATIONS OPEN
Applications are open, and the deadline has been extended to 18 September 2026. We read every one. What you'd bring, and what you're currently stuck on, matters more to us than your job title.
Questions before you start? erik@thevale.eu
€40
REDUCED
If the standard fee would stop you coming. You don't need to explain yourself.
€80
STANDARD
Covers the baseline cost of your place.
€120
PATRONAGE
Covers a bit more than your place, so somebody else can pay less.
You pick your own tier in the form and we don't ask why. Erasmus+ covers the rest. Travel costs are reimbursed up to €250 from outside Germany and €140 for travel within the country.
The VALE is an international non-profit registered in Sweden, running leadership education for young people who are already doing the work. Six residential courses since 2018, plus seminars, workshops and the Symposium.
07 — THE TEAM
The six of us putting the Forum together. Most of us sat where you'll be sitting first.
Erik Sundberg
Co-founder · trainer of every course, 2018–2025
Sweden
Markéta Forejtová
Participant 2025 · team on the 2026 Course
Czech Republic
George Juan Deamer Roda
Participant, 2026 Course
Spain
Louisa Richter
Participant 2021 · trainer 2023 · Course 2025 coordinator
Germany
Mario David Tabares
Participant 2023 · Symposium 2024 co-organiser
Argentina
Lotta Oswald
Participant 2025 · Symposium 2025 co-organiser
Germany
The VALE Forum 2026 is part of The Value-driven Leadership Forum, an Erasmus+ project led by The VALE together with the Youth For Understanding network. Erasmus+ is what makes the fee €40–120 instead of several hundred, and what pays your travel back.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.