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FUN IS A SERIOUS THING

2023-1-ES02-KA153-YOU-0001349152023Mobility of youth workersfinalized
Countries: ES|RO|IT|PT|LT|PL|BE · Grant: €21,390
Physical and mental health, well-beingCreativity, arts and culture

Objectives

Our project arose from a reflection on the importance of promoting wellbeing in work environments, particularly in the context of Youth work. Despite being responsible for providing emotional support to young people, Youth workers often struggle with stress and burnout within their own organizations. This is due to several factors, including heavy workloads, challenging behaviors, emotional demands, inadequate resources, and job insecurity. Acknowledging the inconsistency of our role as emotional support providers while grappling with stress ourselves, we developed a project to address this negative pattern and promote personal and professional wellbeing for both youth workers and young people. Our project aimed to create a new healthy lifestyle and good work environments by promoting new attitudes, behaviors, and innovative practices. We worked with the concept of "fun": we called "fun" all those activities, attitudes, and methods that allowed us to reach our wellbeing, counteracting stress and anxiety during our daily lives (humor, irony, deep connections with others, rediscovering important rituals, playful attitudes, self-awareness), promoting a committed healthy attitude toward responsibilities. Fun during work didn't mean less productivity or irresponsibility in this case but served as a tool for working with pleasure and motivation, acting as an engine for creativity and innovation. We also recognized the many benefits of having fun, including reducing stress, improving mood, enhancing social connections, improving cognitive functioning and creativity, and increasing productivity. Furthermore, having fun could promote a healthy work-life balance, crucial for avoiding burnout and maintaining good mental and physical health. In some cases, fun also served as a coping mechanism in difficult situations. OBJECTIVES These were the main objectives: 1. Promoting activities, practices, attitudes reducing stress: The primary objective of the project is to provide youth workers with practices reducing stress levels, for their benefit and for the future benefit of their youth. The fun activities and ironic approach can help to alleviate stress and create a relaxed environment. preventing burnout. 2. Encouraging positivity: The project encourages positive thinking and promotes optimism in the youth workers and youth. This can be achieved through activities changing the old negative patterns and bringing new meanings through symbolic activities and the use of celebration; 3. Enhancing creativity: The project encourages creativity. The methods used also regard artistic creations, artcraft and written poems, and also renewed activities taken from childhood best memories and activities in contact with nature. 4. Developing coping mechanisms: The project should help the youth to develop healthy coping mechanisms to deal with stress. This can be achieved through the use of tools that promote resilience and adaptability. 5. Strengthen the Relationship between youth workers and young people. Once at home, by participating in fun and engaging activities together, youth workers can build trust and rapport with young people, which can help them feel more comfortable talking about mental health issues. 6. Strengthen the relationships and cooperation between organizations for mutual improvement and capacity growth at European level.

Project partners (7)