13th Clowning & Caring in Ecuador!


Spring 2024 | Quito, Ecuador

Dates soon to be announced!!!

Be on the Waiting List for C&C in Ecuador 2024: click here!

Dear Clowns!!! Come clowning, loving, playing, laughing at the equator line, where the hemispheres of care and activism join together to re-design our caring characters and a new desirable society! Patch Adams MD and the clowns-performers-composers of the School for Designing a Society invite you to join them in the annual clown trip to Ecuador, for daily clowning in hospitals, clinics and streets, clown-skill-building workshops, and two cultural excursionsEveryone is welcome, no experience is necessary. Patch Adams will offer two workshops and lead the trip for two days. PROOF OF VACCINATION AGAINST COVID-19 IS REQUIRED.

 

The Experience

Ecuador, on the equator in northwestern South America, is one of the seventeen megadiverse countries, hosting a great variety of endemic species of flora and fauna. Its 2009 constitution is the first in the world to ensure Rights of Nature (ecosystem rights). The capital city of Quito (where we’ll be) has been named a World Heritage Site for having the best maintained and least changed historic city center in Latin America. The tour will combine daily clowning with daily workshops in care and inquiry into the locale of our clowning. In addition to clowning and care in clinical settings, there will be daily practical workshops in clown technique, love strategy, care and reflection on where we are. And in addition a cultural excursion to la Mitad del Mundo (the Middle of the World) to literally walk on the equator line and experience the magnetism of our planet, and a night tour of the beautiful historical center of Quito, with typical delicious dinner included!

 

Themes

  • Introduction to humanitarian clowning — a way to bring love close.
  • Reframing Clowning: Patch’s lecture on all that clowning can be, plus conversation
  • “Care”: a 4-hour workshop with Patch on care — of self and others. All exercises. Sweetly intense.
  • Clown techniques: Workshops in play and imagination. Role play with performers workshop. The art of engaging people through humor and performance techniques.
  • Where are we? Local activists in Global Peace and Justice movements offer background on unique aspects of Ecuadorian society. Clowning not only as action but as curiosity and observing.
  • Synthesis of our week’s experience: Talk-back sessions: Have I changed? What’s my next step?

Instructors/Facilitators

Patch Adams — entered medical school in 1967 to use medicine as a vehicle for social change; promotes and practices living a life of public joy as a revolutionary act; fount of ideas for avoiding burn-out in long-term social justice and health. Enthusiastor.

Susan Parenti — composer, tap dancer, accordionist, activist. Familiar with the words “idealist’, ‘romantic’, ‘unrealistic’. Writes theater plays on how she wishes people would speak, rather than how they do actually speak.

Mark Enslin — composer, actor, bassoonist, guitarist, oud player, apprentice tabla player, listener, teaching composition facing the power of the respondent, assignment as an art form.

Dario Solina — composer, performer, writer, videomaker, communication designer, since 2010 performs his clown everywhere, every second; Vulnerability for Revolutionaries, teaches the art of Emphasis, MetaClowning maestro.

“Change” – a short documentary about how clowning and this very program
changed Dario’s life, and how strong an impact it could make on your life.

Further playful readings on clowning:

 

Schedule

clown

The detailed day-to-day itinerary of the trip will be available when we get closer to the event, but this is what a typical day looks like:

  • Breakfast at the hotel
  • Travel by bus to clown at hospital, orphanage, or nursing home
  • Lunch
  • Afternoon activity (workshop, reflection, lecture)
  • Dinner
  • After dinner group activity

 


Want to Participate?

Cost: $1550 covers food, lodging, all educational and clowning events, and transportation within the country. This fee does not include your transportation to Ecuador.
Space on this trip is limited. PROOF OF VACCINATION AGAINST COVID-19 IS REQUIRED.
We register participants on a first come first serve basis.

-> Participantes de Ecuador residentes en el país, hay un precio especial para ustedes! 
Escriban a
 dario@patchadams.org

-> Not ready to register yet? Write to dario@patchadams.org

1) Download and read the C&C in Ecuador 2023 Info Pack 1 >

2) Fill out the Electronic Registration & Payment Form >

Please do not fill out the form unless you are prepared to make your deposit. 

3) Deposit and Full-Tuition are Non-Refundable. Please have your final payment made before January 12, 2023. Thanks!

Flights: Please arrive at Quito’s Mariscal Sucre International Airport by the evening of February 12 – Book your flight back home any time on February 19.

Passports: No visa is required except for some countries, check this link for all the requirements and any exception related to your country. Passports has to have at least six months’ validity from entry date, and it can be expedited by your local post office. Please bring two color photocopies of your passport with you.

Vaccines:

COVID-19: You must be fully vaccinated and boosted you must have received your last dose required at least 2 weeks before travel. You’ll be asked to show your vaccination pass / certificate.

The following vaccines are recommended: Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Typhoid, Measles Mumps Rubella (MMR) and Tetanus-diphtheria. Please check if your country has special vaccination requirements: for example if you are coming from a country where Yellow Fever is endemic. Info here. In any case, you may want to talk to your doctor about the recommended vaccinations for travel to Ecuador. We will not be in any areas of the country where Malaria is a possibility.

For more information:
dario@patchadams.org

Dario Solina, Clowning & Caring in Ecuador Tour Coordinator


Downloadable Forms

We ask you to read/fill out the following forms:

  1.  C&C in Ecuador 2023 Info Pack 1 
  2.  Parental-Authorization-for-International-Travel

Patch Adams MD & Gesundheit Institute, P.O. Box 307, Urbana, IL 61803

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