About company

From the history of the department

The Dumánci Youth Tourist Club has a short but relatively rich history. It was unofficially established in 2008 from an initiative to create a section uniting teenagers from various children's camps operating in the Sedlčany region. During the first years, the club ran, but still runs, various weekend events for older children full of various games. At the beginning of 2010, the Dumánci section started its official activities, and its name was determined spontaneously according to the most popular section game. The section thus became a member of the Association of Youth Tourist Sections and took advantage of the opportunity to take over the vacant rotation at the children's summer camp at Trkovský pond. Camps have been held at this traditional camp site of the Sedlčany Tomík people for more than 20 years, and most of our leaders have been going to this camp from a young age, either under the leadership of Ládi Jelena or Jirka Procházka.
Our first camps at this camp went beyond expectations and gave us a strong motivation to continue organizing summer children's camps. As our troop grew year by year, the Trk camp became too small for us. We were looking for a campsite with enough facilities to store our camping equipment all year round, as well as a campsite where we could host more than one camp tour per season. And we found such a campsite in 2012 on the banks of the river Lužnice near the village of Slavňovice. This place was a popular boating camp of the University of Economics. With the general decline of interest in boating, the interest of VŠE in the maintenance of this camp also declined, and we thus had a sensational opportunity to purchase this camp. Despite the floods, two three-week children's camps took place at this camp in 2013.

Our department also experienced a huge shift in 2015. In addition to the fact that we managed to hold the first international camp with English lessons, which was attended by five children from Spain and one instructor from Slovakia, our department participated in the organization of international training in Estonia and organized also own training for youth workers in the city of Tábor. This training was conducted by experienced lecturers from Latvia and Romania and was attended by 28 workers from ten European countries. We also organized a similar project in 2016.
In 2017, we then organized our biggest event to date, a fortnight-long training for young people interested in filmmaking. 50 participants from seven European countries and Turkey together created 6 short films during this limited time, which were shown at FAMU in Prague and at the short film festival in Detmold, Germany.

In May 2021, we again pushed the boundaries of our activity a bit when we organized the Digital Youth training in Yerevan, Armenia. At that time, people in Yerevan were still recovering from the war conflict with Azerbaijan, so for many young Europeans it was their first and intense encounter with war and its consequences. This powerful experience was also reflected in the short films that the participants shot and which were really successful - you can see them on our channel  on YouTube.
For the coming years, we have already planned a lot of other activities for children, youth and adults, which we are very much looking forward to and which will surely take us a little further.