From the beginning, this project came out of a very concrete tension we were seeing in our daily work with young people. On one side, more and more young people we work with were struggling with anxiety, emotional fatigue, and a general sense of disconnection. On the other, we were running environmental and outdoor activities that clearly had a positive effect on them — but we were not yet consciously linking these two dimensions in our youth work practice. So what we really wanted to do with “Earth and Mind” was to bring these two strands together in a way that is practical for youth workers. Not as a theoretical concept, but as something they can actually use when they go back home. The core intention was to support youth workers and youth leaders to feel more confident and equipped to address mental well-being through environmental engagement. Many of them were already touching on one of these areas — either mental health or environmental education — but very few had the tools or language to combine them in a meaningful way. We wanted to bridge that gap. More concretely, we set out to strengthen their competences in working with mental well-being in a non-formal education setting. This was not about turning youth workers into psychologists, but about helping them better recognize emotional needs, create safer spaces, and use nature as a supportive element in their activities. At the same time, we wanted them to better understand why nature-based approaches work — not just “going outside is nice”, but how green spaces, movement, and sensory experiences can actually support regulation, reflection, and resilience. Another important objective was to move away from fragmented approaches. In many organisations, mental health and environmental topics are treated separately, often depending on funding or trends. Through this project, we wanted to encourage a more holistic way of designing activities, where well-being, sustainability, and personal development are naturally interconnected rather than isolated themes. Building a network also played a key role. We worked with participants from Germany, Estonia, Armenia, and Georgia, coming from quite different realities, including many who work with young people with fewer opportunities. The idea was not only to train individuals, but to connect practitioners who can continue exchanging methods, challenges, and ideas beyond the training itself. This kind of peer support is often what sustains change in practice. A very concrete objective was the development of the youth wellness plan “Nature's Nurture: A Strategic Plan for Youth Mental Well-being”. From the start, we wanted to avoid producing something abstract or purely descriptive. The intention was to co-create a practical resource that participants could adapt to their own contexts — whether they work in urban youth centres, rural communities, or with displaced young people. This also gave a clear direction to the learning process during the activity. All of this was grounded in a strong need we identified together with partners: the growing mental health challenges among young people, combined with an increasing disconnection from nature due to urbanisation, digital lifestyles, and in some cases also displacement and instability. We felt that youth work has a unique position to respond to this — but only if youth workers are supported with the right tools and perspectives. So in essence, what we wanted to achieve was not only to run a training course, but to shift how participants approach well-being in their everyday practice — making it more grounded, more holistic, and more connected to the environments young people are part of.