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Being Well Outdoors - An experiential approach on developing mental well-being
Start date: Aug 1, 2014, End date: Nov 30, 2014 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Mental health amongst youngsters and young adults is a tremendous challenge for our society. The number of youngsters suffering from psychosis, depression or anxiousness and other related mental troubles has reached an alarming level, resulting in a most dramatic number of suicides amongst youngsters. Youthwork associations, sporting clubs and schools can no longer assume that this situation need to be addressed in specialized therapeutic or psychiatric hospitals alone. It is our duty to assure the mental and physical well-being of youngsters and young adults the best we can. This implies we need to take into account the emotional safety and social development of our kids and youngsters in order to prevent mental damage or illnesses. But also for kids already encountering mild or serious mental conditions and being helped within specialized psychiatric institutes or hospitals, we need to consider how we can maximize the chances for those youngsters to re-include society during and after their treatment, or to help the psychological recovery by combining therapeutic actions (which are out of scope for youthwork, hence this project) with the specific approach and added value of youthwork and non formal education. In this project, we would like to point out two majors elements that in our opinion and based on our experience may be key factors in facilitating the recovery process of youngsters. In the first place, we don't want those youngsters to fade away in hospitals or psychiatric centres. We want them to stay in touch with 'normality', even though 'normality' might be just too hard to constantly live in right now. On the other hand, youngsters and young adults facing mental troubles are not only those troubles. Besides what is not functioning 'normally', it's obvious that they also have competences, talents and qualities. It not surprising to expect that especially those aspects of their personalities, might very well help to overcome their mental issues. So it makes quite sense to help young patients to acquire a in depth understanding of their qualities, just as it makes sense to have a clear and complete images of the illness or condition they are suffering. This appreciative point of view is in our opinion an important added value youthwork and non-formal education has to offer in the process of recovery. Adventurous outdoor activities might very well suit this purpose, as they often provide youngsters and young adult a feeling of an extraordinary achievement when participants attain the summit of difficult rock climb. The training course will be organized by NATURE (Belgium) from the 6th until the 13th of September 2014 in Olloy-sur-Viroin, a small village in a great environment, in the south of Belgium, near to the French border. Partners are organizations from Iceland, Spain, Slovakia, Hungary, Germany & Italy.

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