The “Let’s Talk” partners gathered in Athens for the 2nd Transnational Partners Meeting

Oct 6, 2022News

On 26-27 September, 2022, the four partnering organisations of the Erasmus+ programme “Let’s talk”, which aims to strengthen the capacity of youth workers in supporting young peoples’ mental health focusing on a gender-sensitive approach, gathered in Athens, Greece, for the 2nd Transnational Partners Meeting.

During the meeting, there was an open discussion regarding the national and transnational roadmap, the changes and additions that must be done to the reports and the dissemination of Policy Analysis and Recommendations on Youth’s Mental Health Gender Sensitive needs. We were able to conclude on a timetable regarding the completion of both Project Results and organize our next meetings, both in person and online.

It is expected that the next meeting will take place in February 2023, at Novi Sad, to discuss the final details of the training for both young people and the youth workers which will be held in Croatia in March.

For the implementation of Gender Sensitive Youth Mental Health Program and ToolKit Resources, it was agreed that its components would be the training curriculum consisting of a description, the learning outcomes, examples of additional education tools, references and duration. Also, a Handbook will be made for the youth workers, explaining the importance of gender perspective on the mental health of youth, a recommendation for gender-sensitive support for young people and gender-sensitive pedagogical tools and interventions. Lastly, a workbook will also be developed for the young participants.

Regarding the training of the groups, after brainstorming on the matters affecting young people’s mental health and how youth workers can deal with them, we concluded on the curriculum topics. All partners agreed that the most common issues young people face in their countries were the lack of support system from adults and family, the continuing gender stereotypes, the lack of knowledge on mental health issues of youth, and many other common risks that were stated during the field research of all partner countries. Drawing from these observations and many others that were brought upon us, we decided that the topics of the curriculum will revolve around addressing mental health issues with a gender and a holistic sensitive approach, socialization and identity (how do young people understand the world they are living), building resilience in youngsters, gender equality, stigma and youth voice, as well as means of non-formal education (different activities, themes and tools about how to implement the above). We also believe that the curriculums should be adapted to each target group. Therefore, there will be two different curriculums, one for young people and one for youth workers.

We are pleased with the outcome of this two-day meeting and the fruitful discussions that were held. All representatives showed interactivity and were highly motivated to reach the goals of our project. The meeting was an excellent opportunity to listen to each partner’s views on the project, evaluate its progress, and inspire the next steps of its implementation.