Mental Health
Sometimes, youth workers or teachers don’t know how to deal with the intense emotions of participants in a group, nor how to manage their own emotional reactions. It is not uncommon that, when addressing difficult social topics (such as violence, discrimination, conflict), participants express emotions like anger, fear, or sadness, or share feelings of being discriminated against, excluded, or offended.
In non-formal education, the participant is seen as a whole person, with needs that go beyond intellectual development — including social and emotional development.
In 2010, Group “Let’s…” developed a program called “Emotion”, aimed at empowering trainers and youth workers and helping them develop their emotional competencies. Through self-work and by drawing on personal experience, trainers and youth workers are empowered to respond to challenges that arise in group work. Since then, we have held many trainings on this topic, mostly with international groups of participants.
Since 2020, we have also been implementing mental health trainings at the national level.
In recent years, the trainings have focused on working with teachers and professors, as well as youth workers engaged in civil society organizations (CSOs) or local Youth Offices (KzM), due to the recognized need to develop emotional competencies in those working with youth — both in and outside the school system.
The objectives of the programs related to mental health include:
- Encouraging youth workers, parents, and professionals working with youth (in CSOs, Youth Offices, schools, etc.) to apply competencies, knowledge, methods, and approaches from the field of mental health in their work with youth and youth from vulnerable groups — while also empowering young people to speak openly about the challenges they face in this area;
- Enhancing the knowledge and skills of youth workers, parents, and professionals working with youth to conduct workshops, organize parent groups, trainings, and other non-formal educational activities that address emotionally sensitive topics and youth mental health, allowing young people to better understand their own relationship to such situations;
- Supporting youth workers and parents in constructively responding to emotionally challenging situations in youth work (such as addressing mental health challenges or crisis situations), in order to empower young people going through such experiences and increase their sense of well-being and satisfaction;
- Empowering young people to speak openly about mental health challenges and to publicly voice their needs, thereby becoming a source of support for other youth in their local communities;
- Exploring good practices in preventive youth mental health work;
- Empowering youth workers, parents, and those working directly with young people to use new, innovative techniques in the field of mental health.