POSTPONED/CANCELLED: Power of Positivity - Youth Exchanges

Supporting Mental Health Is Easy

When talking about mental health, you may instantly think about negative issues like depression and mental illnesses. You should not. We all have a state of mental health, one day our mental health can be worse, one day better. But there are concrete ways how to promote our mental well being.

In this training you will understand better what affects our mental health and how we can take care of it. You will learn methods to discuss the topic with young people and have time to think how to help their well being. This is important for you, if you are working with young people. And you should be, because youth exchanges need young people.

Can youth exchanges promote mental health?

Well, yes. You might know that you feel better when you feel heard, you feel you belong to a group, you have your place in there and others accept and support you. You also may recognise it feels good to accomplish interesting tasks, explore unknown things and overcome a nice challenge. Youth exchanges can offer all of this to your young people, if you take care that they are able to be involved, respected and supported in planning, preparation and carrying out of exchanges.

In this training you will learn, how you can help young people to have ownership in their youth exchange.

You will have a small pre-task before your arrival, so be prepared to return it.

Who is this training for?

You should be interested in the topic of mental wellbeing as well as in international youth work. You may be interested in

• challenging your understanding of mental wellbeing
• learning ways to talk about mental health with young people
• learning working ways to promote mental health
• organising youth exchanges where young people are actively involved in the projects
• learning ways to support young people's involvement in youth exchange projects
• understanding how mental health can be discussed in youth exchanges
• finding possible partners to future youth exchanges who share the same understanding of working ways

It is much better if you will already have a group of young people that you are working with. It is even better, if you have talked with them about the possibility of an international youth exchange and they are interested in one. We will prioritise applicants who work regularly with a group of young people and regularly organise daily or weekly local activities for them. Starting to plan a youth exchange is much easier, if you can start working with your group when you return home.

If you only organise international activities and always recruit the participants in the projects after they have been granted, you are not the kind of participant we are looking for.

Peaceful (and sleepy) countryside

The training takes you to a remote area in Eastern Finland, over 500 km to the north of Helsinki. Youth Centre Hyvärilä is one of the state founded youth centres in Finland. It is located by a lake surrounded by nature. It is not close to services, but they offer good facilities for training, accommodation and meals.

https://www.hyvarila.com/english/

You will also have time to chat and change opinions, practices and ideas with youth workers from other countries and look at the midnight sun by a Finnish lake.

You should know, though, that there will be youth groups around, which means you cannot use alcohol in the youth centre area. Finnish youth work is substance free and you should also respect that in our country.