Sea & Coast, Lake & Shores: Conquering Stress, Anxiety and Grief

As a group of NGOs who work with young people from diverse background, we felt the need to learn more about the psychological issues attached to stress, anxiety and loss especially after the effects of the pandemic. We work with many young people coming from a difficult family situations, failures in their studies, unemployed, homelessness and from a migrant background. Due to their background and vulnerability they experience a great deal of stress and anxiety. This project was created to build on the different experiences of working with young people in order to create a product that will help youth workers when they reach out to young people who are vulnerable and fractured through their life experiences. Youth workers, and other professionals, came together to develop the resources and the training required in this project. They developed the training modules and the resources required for nonformal activities to help them develop the tools required for their youth work approach. A Toolkit was created including a literature review showing the psychological impact of stress, anxiety loss and grief on young people and how nonformal activities, especially those using the sea and lakes environment, can help to address these issues

By the end of the project the partnership wanted to have achieved 6 main objectives: 1. Create synergy between organizations working with vulnerable young people in Europe 2. Help partner organizations to better understand the needs of the young people, especially those with fewer opportunities, in relation to anxiety, stress, grief and loss 3. Train youth workers in working with nonformal learning methods in blue spaces environments. 4. Create a training course for youth workers 5. Develop a Toolkit with research and practical nonformal activities 6. Disseminate the results so that they can be used with young people

- The project brought together youth experts and professionals together to share their knowledge, skills and competences to develop a training programme and resource material for youth activities as present them as a toolkit. - The partners, led by a researcher, developed the intellectual outputs after sharing knowledge and good youth practices, and professionally testing the activities with young people. - 4 youth workers from each of the five youth organisations in the partnership were trained. - Through the dissemination events and through further involvement in their organizations, participants shared the toolkit and training programme with other youth organisations and youth workers.

- A toolkit was developed for youth workers who want to help young people to conquer grief through nonformal activities connected with the sea and coast together with a training guide for youth workers - 20 youth workers were trained on how to use the toolkit in their work with young people. - Through the dissemination event, the toolkit and training guide was shared among 250 youth workers and 75 organisations. Further dissemination continues to take place both in person and online. The toolkit was made available online and partners continue to share it with other organizations.