The project titled Companionship in the "Journey to the Unknown" - Mental Health Training for Voluntary Service Organisations will be a training held in Miko ajki, Poland 2nd- 6th May, 2011. We will discuss international and intercultural youth voluntary service as a double journey: into another culture and into getting to know oneself deeper.The theme "health" is chosen, because we as voluntary service organisations aim to support the maintainance of good mental health of our volunteers for their benefit and fruitfulness. We would like to improve our skills to combat the roots of disorders and mental disabilities in the life of our young volunteers and the obstacles these may bring in their voluntary service.During the five- day training course we will 1. acquire knowledge about mental health difficulties and 2. get training in how to deal with them. By collecting existing contacts of EDYN members outside EDYN we would like to promote volunteering in the Neighbouring Countries by raising awareness to the social multiplier effect brought by good quality volunteering.The thirty-nine participants will come from the following EU and non-EU countries: Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, Italy, Slovakia, France, the Netherlands, Romania, Denmark, Poland, Hungary, Latvia, Germany, Israel, Georgia, Serbia, Belarus, Armenia, the Ukraine and Russia.The topic of the training will be developed by following a succession of groups of questions about the specific situation of psychological challenges of young people during intercultural volunteering:1. "What kind of cases and mental issues have we met?"2. "Where do these issues originate from?"3. "How can I tackle and alleviate the crisis?"4. "What difficulties am I confronted with when handling the crisis?"In the first part we will be working mainly in groups and then reporting the results in plenum. We thenwill acquire in-depth information about the theory of disorders from clinical psychologist experts.Thirdly, we will have a session of practical training in counselling and crisis management, includingvarious work forms. The fourth part will serve as the consolidation phase: we will analyse cases andexperience problem-solving situations by simulation games and role-plays. During the workshop,staff in different roles (VS coordinator, supervisor, mentors, etc.) together will work how competencesand responsiblities should be distributed through the companionship in voluntary service.