It is an Erasmus+ Ka229 strategic partnership including schools from Hungary, Italy, Greece and Turkey.

The driving force behind this project is a phenomenon partners all experience on a daily basis and watch with a growing concern – an increasing number of students suffering from stress on a daily basis and often a short-term or long-term mental imbalance. The youth of today must live in a fast-paced ever changing world. Adolescence is a turbulent time in itself, teens are under stress from parents, teachers and peers but the young minds of today are also constantly exposed to often negative influence from TV, internet, music and films. Additionally, they live in a world full of challenges – economical, environmental and social – and as adults of the future they will be expected to find solutions to problems that will have not been solved by then or new ones that will have emerged. All this creates uncertainty and anxiety in them. Their burdens have doubled – they must navigate through the difficult period from being a child to becoming an adult and they must also cope with the stress created by the challenges of the world around them. Many European and OECD programmes and researches have placed young people in their focus (Youth in Action, the Mental Health and Wellbeing EU Joint Action, The OECD PISA global competence framework, OECD Learning Framework 2030, Youth Report 2015 etc.) as they all recognise the importance of the mental health and well-being of today’s youth. They also recognise the role of schools in providing support for children's mental health and well-being.

This project would like to generate change because partners believe that although we start small we can achieve far reaching results. Partners are aware that schools should find ways to support students’ well-being and mental health. However, it may be out of teachers scope to change the national curriculum, to change the general mental health education of their country or to find an in-school mental health specialist without financial means provided by the school maintainer. The objective of the project is two-fold: to effectively reach out to students and to provide teachers with the necessary skills and competences to do that. Partners would like to use their own resources and find the means to start progress on a small scale. Partners would like to improve the mental and emotional well-being of their students by identifying problems, by strengthening teacher-student and teacher-parent relationships, by supporting students in difficulty, and most of all teach them techniques with the help of which they can inrease their self-awareness. Self-knowledge is a key to a strong personality, a successful future life and career. In order to achieve this, other areas must also be dealt with which are linked to and feed into self-awareness: self-esteem, learning and teaching techniques, peer counselling, stress-management, entrepreneurship, experiential education, effective learning, career guidance, etc.   

Activities will take the form of interactive workshops for teachers or for learners, lectures, student presentations, lesson observations, meetings with professionals, online activities, creating surveys, creating a project logo, creating board games, film clubs, creating an e-guidebook, mutual teaching-learning session, sharing of ideas, experiences ad good practices. Some of these activities will need need face-to-fae interaction and for this purpose transnational meetings and short-term student exchange programmes will be used, other activities can be administered locally (e.g. film clubs) and must be carried out locally as they are tasks designated to students of individual partner schools (e.g. conducting surveys). A regular contact among partners is going to be maintained through means of telecommunication.

Project partners intend to address all the students (aged 12-19) of the partner schools. As they are all learners of the school where project participants learn and teach, the project results will also have an impact on them. They will also be able to enjoy the benefits of a professionally more developed staff, new teaching methods and a more relaxed teaching-learning environment. However, the project will only be able to work with a smaller number of students and teachers. There is a larger group of participants who will be actively involved in local activities and a smaller number of participants who will be selected to take part in transnational meetings and short-term student exchange programmes. Their merits will be measured on an objective scale and they will have to show a deep interest in the project theme.

We firmly believe that the currently proposed Erasmus+ multilateral partnership will provide a structured, wide-ranging and rewarding project which will benefit all participants in the long term, both in their future career and educational development. Sustainability will be achieved with a dedicated approach and through cooperation and collaboration, with the sharing of information and experiences. All project activities serve the purpose of making the present of our youth a better one, creating a more relaxed adolescence for them so that they can become more self-aware, emotionally more secure, more satisfied with their lives, more active, responsible for their own learning.