Back in September 2021, members of Shokkin Group Estonia took part in the training course “Leading Ladder” in Portugal, and met with other leaders from Romania and Portugal with whom they had implemented their first international youth exchange earlier that summer.
The positive emotions and energy that characterize Erasmus+ activities and successful adventures were still in their chest, and already during that week of “Leading Ladder”, Anna-Liisu and Alii came up with an idea for a follow-up project: a youth exchange about mental health and stress management.
“StressOff” was then born, applied, and finally implemented in a naturally beautiful secluded venue near Haapsalu during the period 04-13.08.2022, including four groups of youngsters and young adults from Estonia, Spain, Portugal, Romania and Czech Republic.
The main goal of the project was to give the participating young people a set of tools on how to deal with negative stress and to encourage them to take more care of their mental well-being.
In order to achieve this, the concrete objectives for this project were:
- To destigmatize stereotypes and prejudices around mental health.
- To encourage participants to take more care of their mental health.
- To encourage participants to take more time off social media.
- To try out different tools for handling stress.
- To learn about inner and outer factors which influence the stress-levels and how to solve them.
We have asked Alesja Jagolnik, member of Shokkin Group and group leader of the Estonian team during the youth exchange, to share some reflections on her experience:
“This summer we spent ten productive and interesting days in Haapsalu for the Youth Exchange ‘StressOff’. The topic of this project was mental health and I feel like during these days, when we were surrounded by beautiful nature, I discovered new things about myself and others.
For me, this project made a lot of questions come up in my mind, because we had a lot of sessions about self-discovery. While it was hard sometimes to manage and process all these emotions, I was really grateful to have people that I could rely on around me.
I learned more about how people, including myself, interact and react to different situations and I understood that sometimes we just need a bit of time to think and process and someone to rely on and everything can be manageable!
In my perspective, the highlight of the project was the day that the Portuguese team organised. We had some interesting sessions about self-image and self-esteem. I learned a lot of new tools for self-reflection, such as the “onion reflection”, the “Johari’s window” and the “love letter to myself”, that have been really useful to me!
Last but not least, I want to express how proud I am of my team! I have been in touch with some of the participants from the Estonian team for over a year, and for me it was amazing to realize how much more confident in themselves they have become, how much they grew as people. It was really impressive to see how well they worked together and facilitated their sessions.
I think this project gave them a lot, it impacted their life. For instance, one of them is diving deeper and deeper into mental health and meditation, which I find very inspiring. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to connect further with them and support them during this week!
Thank you to all the organizations that were involved in this projec, a big thank you to Shokkin Group Estonia, and especially to the project’s initiators, Anna-Liisu and Adele!”
Alesja Jagolnik
