When I first heard of the proposal to have a youth exchange about mental health, here in Sassari, with AICEM as the hosting organisation, it almost felt surreal, too far, out of reach to touch. When it was confirmed that it would indeed happen, and Yekaterina who was responsible asked if anyone was interested in facilitating with her, I volunteered. It felt big and scary, to facilitate a youth exchange, but also with a topic that is so close to my heart. I didn't know how I would approach it, like most big and scary things. That was also the appeal to why I wanted to do it.
The participants would be coming from five countries: Spain, Greece, Romania, Portugal and Italy and they would be here for a week. We started to plan and brainstorm ideas and figure out what topics to cover, as well as come up with a topic for the participants since they would on each day have their own workshop and national evening. For the Italian participants, we got to go to their school to talk about the project and share ideas. To initiate a project about mental health, we also highlighted the importance of approaching it with grace and making sure that we spoke respectfully.
The participants were within the age group of 17-20, and as a twenty-year-old, I think that they at first didn't grasp that I was one of the facilitators. I cannot tell you all of the details of the exchange as I and the other facilitators; Yekaterina, Sabrina and Ali worked different shifts. But I will do my best to tell it from my point of view.
The first day was more of an introductory day, where we additionally got to meet Sassari’s mayor and ended the day with an “intercultural dinner” where the countries brought some foods, snacks or desserts from their countries.
The second day was Valentine's Day and also my first day of facilitating. I was a bit nervous but also confident in the activities I would be holding. For the first activity I read out different statements about mental health and the stigma surrounding it, the group had to choose if they agree, disagree or somewhat agree with the statements by standing on three different lines. Once they had chosen their opinion we asked them to elaborate as to why they chose that. I appreciated their openness in their answers and felt like we got more of an insight as to how stigma plays a role and showcases differently in the regions they are from. In the evening of that same day, we had our Cine forum. Cine forum is an event where we watch a movie on the topic of mental health and afterwards, we have a group discussion about its representation in the film with questions. Since it was Valentine's Day we decided to watch “Silver linings playbook” as it includes the topic of both mental health and love. After the movie and discussion, we had pizza.
Thursday was the day I had been responsible for planning from start to finish. I was crossing my fingers that it would turn out good. The topic of my day was “taking care of your own mental health and healthy coping mechanisms”. I thought that the best way to approach it was to make it personal and use my own experiences and coping mechanisms as a base. I started with an icebreaker where I told them to take as many Post-it notes as they wanted and afterwards, I revealed that as many Post-it notes they took, that's how many good things they have to write about themselves. In groups, they got to tell the others about their good qualities and additionally give a compliment to the person next to them. Afterwards, I had a presentation about the topic and later gave the word over to the Spanish participants to have their workshop. After lunch, I would have my first activity of the day which would involve us going to Monserrato Park, a beautiful park in Sassari. I wanted the participants to get the opportunity to see more of the city while we would be journaling, which is nice to do at a nice location outdoors. I had also gotten to design some gadgets, these gadgets included a tote bag and a journal, for the activity, which were very cool to see come to life. Along with journaling another healthy way to cope with negative emotions is going on a walk. It takes around 30 minutes to walk to Monserrato Park. Some participants were sceptical of this at first, I told them that on the way there we would have to walk but on the way back they would have the option to go by bus. Once the activities were done I asked who wanted to go by bus, all of the participants preferred to walk.
In the park, the participants got to do some different journaling exercises, and afterwards write down some statements about mental health that we discussed together. Before we left I had asked Charlotte, my colleague volunteer, to hold a meditation, which she did a great job at, and the participants said that they enjoyed it and felt calm afterwards.
Once we came back we moved on to one of my personal favourites, which is painting. I didn't know how this activity would go, but I have personally always loved to paint and it's been a calming and fun way for me to deal with my negative thoughts. For this activity I didn't want much structure, I wanted them to be free to paint whatever came to their mind and rewind after a long day. To finish the activities of the day we read from “the box of Kindness” where the participants could leave an anonymous nice note to each other. After dinner and a long day, I planned to go home, however, the participants asked me to stay for the Portuguese culture night, so I did.
The next day many of the participants left notes in the kindness box for me, thanking me for the previous day. At the beginning of every day, we started with an evaluation of the day before. I got a bit teary-eyed when I read what the participants had written, it felt special and good that the day I had planned had been successful. Their words meant a lot to me.
Some reviews from the evaluation were:
“Yesterday's activities were a whole different experience. We had time to meditate and paint, so I liked them a lot as they made me feel like I am free and so relaxed.”
“Yesterday I think was the best day, I had a lot of fun”
“I discovered that I really like guided meditation because I know that I love to walk and to be in nature. Also, I realised how much I missed painting”
“The meditation part was an incredible idea that can be connected with our mental health”.
“I felt good and comfortable”.
On Saturday we went to Alghero and finished the evening with the last national evening which was the Greeks. I got emotional during the end because I felt that I had been a part of something beautiful and that we had accomplished what we wanted, what I wanted. My goal with going into my volunteering experience had been to hopefully make some sort of positive impact, and I felt that with this project I accomplished that goal. This became more evident when we had to say goodbye the next day. As our last activity, the participants got to write what baggage they leave behind after this experience and what they are bringing with them, we also did an activity where each participant got a paper attached to their back and everyone got to write a nice note anonymously on each other's backs. The outcome was so nice to see. And, to top it off, we couldn't let the participants leave without having tiramisu.
Emilia
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