Freska On Ice

This winter has been a beautiful one so we decided that it would be a great opportunity to go do some winter sports together with the Freska people. Skiing seemed a bit difficult (find a forest, get the gear, find people who are ready to hit the forest with skiis…) but we thought that ice skating would be perfect for this purpose! So we decided that on 6th of March we would hit the ice rink in the Helsinki city center.

Before the ice skating we put together a team of ”pro ice skaters” who would be acting as teachers because we knew that for many this would be the very first time even putting on skates. We wanted to encourage everyone to participate no matter if they had previous experience or not! I was sure that they would be in good hands with our ”pros”.

When we got to the ice rink we were a bit worried that maybe the cold windy weather might reduce our ”numbers”. We were so happy to see how many Freska superheroes showed up all ready and eager to learn how to ice skate! Once we got things started and put our skates on it turned out that we had only couple of people with previous experience and the first-timers were a bit nervous. Challenge accepted: our ”coaches” started to guide everybody on the ice one by one. Slowly but surely even our first-timers started to skate around the rink by themselves, wohoo!

From the organizer point of view Freska On Ice was very rewarding in many ways. First of all it was lovely to see people getting out their comfort zones and trying out new things. And most of all how happy it made them once they succeeded and learnt a new skill!! The second amazing thing was how people ”bonded” during the ice skating. They were in the literal meaning of the word supporting one another and trying to figure out how to do this new thing together. People might have shown up to the event with someone they already knew but everyone for sure met some new buddies. The best comment from that night was: ”Could we have Freska on Ice every week?”!

Thank you all of my brave ice skaters, it was a great night and I look forward to seeing you in other events this spring!

-Lisa