STEP IN!
Start date: Feb 1, 2016,
End date: May 31, 2016
PROJECT
FINISHED
Mental health of todays young people is an aspect everyone working with youth has to deal with almost every day. Mental health in is made up of 4 dimensions: thoughts, behaviour, emotions and physical reactions. All of them are interconnected and together influence all parts of our lives. Being in peace with yourself affects all aspects of young peoples lives - school, personal life, socializing , quality of sleep, eating, energy level, ability to think clearly and make good decisions, physical activity, self-esteem and so on. Lately the levels of stress, anxiety, feeling of having no goals in life, eating disorders and self-distructive behavioural patterns have risen among young people, more and more youthworkers have to dealth with the (first) signs effectively and in professional manner. How to do it best, what are the best practices we can share with each other and learning new methods were the key issues we addressed during this project, mainly during a training week in Viljandi, Estonia. Altogether we had 36 participants from 6 countries - Greece, Turkey, Romania, Latvia, Bulgaria and Estonia, 6 persons from every country.The participants were asked to share their gained knowledge and new skills with other youthworkers in their country/region, so that the knowledge is spread. A overview of the methods and best practices was put together at the end of the training week and shared.
Longer term benefits include having more happy young people as they have better and more professional people to lean on or discuss their issues, youthworkers are more confident of themselves on lending their helping hand to youth or just being present for them.