Stronger Youth is a project funded by the Erasmus+ program, running for two years from December 2023 to November 2025. Its main goal is to provide a methodology and a comprehensive toolkit to support peer mentoring with the aim of preventing depression and social exclusion among young people. The project focuses on improving social and communication skills through mentoring young people, offering tools for assessing their skills and receiving feedback to become mentors. It also provides guidelines for educators overseeing the mentoring process and a range of activities for mentors and young people to develop social and psychological resilience.
The project involves partners from six countries and seven organizations (Czech Republic, PELICAN; Italy, VITECO and PRISM; Poland, FRAME; Portugal, UE/CIEP; Romenia, CPIP; and Spain, INNOHUB).
Objectives
The project aims to create and evaluate a peer mentoring program to promote the mental health and to prevent depressive behaviors and social exclusion among young people. Based on the research already carried out by each country on what teenagers need and how they get help, an online questionnaire will be developed to assess social and communication skills and providing feedback for those interested in becoming a mentor and for the recruitment of young resilient volunteers. In addition, there will be activities for mentors and mentees and a guide for educators on supervising the mentoring process
National Report – Preparation for OSAT
Each participating country (Czechia, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Spain) has already completed its National Report, which analyses the current situation of adolescents and their mental health. The National Report has two parts. The first part is theoretical and it looks at current research on mental health in teenagers in four domains :1) Adolescents’ mental health and well-being related problems and risk factors: symptoms, bullying and other victimization experiences social isolation, loneliness, etc.; 2) Adolescents’ mental health and well-being related skills and protective factors: well-being, socioemotional and other skills social support networks, etc.; 3) Adolescents’ preferences about communication and help seeking to cope with personal issues; 4) Peer mentoring programs. The second part is about gathering evidence on how European teenagers think about their mental health and well-being. The goal is to understand how adolescents view their mental health issues and how they cope, identify what causes mental health problems and helps with mental health, and find out how they prefer to get help. The team from the University of Évora is currently finalising the global report of the data collected in each country, which will be used as the basis for the construction of an online tool to help young people assess their skills (OSAT), find out what they’re good at and where they can improve, and decide if they’re ready to be a peer mentor. International Meetings
On 31 January and 1 February 2024, the Kick-off meeting of the project took place at the University of Évora, Portugal. This event marked the official start of activities and offered the opportunity to discuss some key points of the project. The next meeting will be held in October in Valencia, Spain.
