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Because I'm... Healthy!
Because I'm... Healthy!
Start date: Aug 1, 2014,
End date: Jun 1, 2015
PROJECT
FINISHED
Nowadays, due to problems like high unemployment rates, uncertainty about professional future and the current economic situation, life became more and more stressful for European citizens. In the other hand in a changing society like ours the enterprises and organizations must adapt to new methods of work to satisfy the current demands and to constantly redefine the tasks in the different work positions, generating an unstable situation for the workers that therefore produces stress problems.
Within this situation, the concern about a healthy lifestyle and alimentation are not our main priorities. For that reason we usually turn to fast food and a sedentary lifestyle due to the lack of time to cook healthy food and to organize a regular exercise routine. Moreover, this factors increase the difficulty to maintain through time healthy attitudes. Is well known that a healthy lifestyle contributes to an active ageing. This means to as the years go by we can keep an important level of independence, we feel more motivated and with more energy to participate in society and in addition we can remain active for more time in the labor market.
For all of these reasons our project aims to give back the priority status to health and wellbeing and mental health as well as providing tools and techniques for its consecution. The whole project will be within an intercultural framework that allows the participants to share ideas and realize the existence of multiple ways to approach to the healthy lifestyle topic.
“Because I’m… Healthy!” is a youth exchange project which aims at bringing together in Lisbon- Portugal, for 7 days, 25 youngsters aged between 18 and 30 years old from Finland, Spain, Poland, Cyprus and Portugal.
The main objectives of the exchange are:
- To provide different psychological tools to improve mental health and the way we face our daily live challenges;
- To reflect about healthy lifestyles and the importance to maintain it through time involving different cultural perspectives;
- To improve diet through international cuisine and ecological agriculture;
- To promote outdoors physical exercise.
Participants should be eager to learn about proposed topics. It is not required to have any particular degree of formal education, but to have positive and proactive attitude, show tolerance, flexibility and capacity to adapt, motivation and enthusiasm. During the selection process, there will not be any exclusion regarding to background of candidates. Nevertheless, we would like to give priority to people under the risk of social exclusion and those with difficult economical and/or professional situation.
Youngsters will have the opportunity to reflect and work together in an intercultural environment, with the use of non-formal education methods, throughout activities such as:
- Cultural diets.
- Self-esteem and resilience workshops.
- Cycling tour and aquatic activities.
- Visit to Urban Community “Hortas”.
- Construction of an ecological vegetable garden.
- Introduction to Capoeira: acrobatics, dance and music.
- Relaxation techniques.
- Compilation of healthy recipes used during the exchange into an e-book.
- Flashmob to promote a healthy lifestyle.
All these activities and methods will stimulate self-reflection and empower youngsters to make individual choices to improve their lifestyle and local communities’ lifestyle as well. Participants will also be able to learn about skills, tools and techniques during the project’s activities and, upon return home, by sharing with their peers their learnings and, by showing their example, foster positive changes in society which will improve quality of life in Europe.
We expect the participants to change their minds to be more aware of the importance of taking care of our body, not just at a physical and organic level but also at a mind level. We want them to realize that it is not impossible to change our habits and routines to a healthier lifestyle and to maintain them, but it’s important to make it step by step and with a holistic approach if we want to be successful in this objective. Therefore we want to encourage them to use all the knowledge acquired during the exchange on their daily bases to move to healthier lifestyles that for sure will help to face with more energy and motivation each day. Finally we expect a positive impact especially on the unemployed participants and we are sure this exchange will enhance their possibility of finding a job.