ERASMUS+ Small scale partnership for cooperation and exchanges of practices

Project number: 2023-1-DK01-KA210-YOU-000165693

 

Project Partners:

Well-being Lab (Sweden)

Co-literate (Denmark)

 

Approaches to improving the mental wellbeing of young people are not always effective. Design thinking, with its emphasis on unlocking creative and collaborative problem-solving, skills, and innovation, allows for explorations that empower young people to find and create solutions that are more engaging and relevant to their experiences of mental wellbeing.

 

This project will establish cooperation and exchange of good practices between two partner organisations from Sweden and Denmark and empower them to use design thinking to improve youth mental wellbeing. The project aims to improve organisational conditions for engaging with youth in creative problem-solving, encouraging innovative and critical skills, and creating a platform for solutions that address the real-life problems identified by young people in their local and wider environments.

 

• We want to pilot a small-scale partnership that brings together young people with teachers, youth workers, doctors, and people who make decisions in the community.

• We want to talk about the problems and unfair treatment that young people face when it comes to their wellbeing.

• We also want to find out what works best in different places, like in our local area, in other parts of the Nordic countries, and in Europe. This way, we can help teachers and youth workers do a better job in our group.

• We want to talk more openly about how young people feel and how they're doing mentally in our local area. We'll use different ways of talking and sharing information that young people will help find and create. We'll also use creative ways to share what we learn with others.

• We want young people and those working with them to learn more about mental health. We'll give them “training” and tools to find and use information about how to take care of their mental wellbeing. We'll focus on finding out what young people need, including those who might be going through a tough time, and ensuring everyone can participate in conversations around their wellbeing.\

 

Our method - Wellbeing Literacy Research Labs

 

People might think that if we give young people the right information and tools, they'll

automatically be happy and healthy. But it's not always that simple. Being happy and

healthy is a tricky thing because it involves so many different aspects.

 

Some people call it a "wicked problem" because it's not easy to solve. But just saying that doesn't explain why it's so tricky. In this project, we're going to use a special way of thinking called design thinking. This means we'll treat young people like knowledgeable thinkers and doers. They'll do research and try out ideas to ask questions and find good solutions.

 

We're doing this because we want to figure out how young people understand and

improve their wellbeing. Even though “experts” try their best to support mental health, it doesn't always work well for every young person. That's why we want to try new ways.

We'll use fun and creativity to help young people come up with their own solutions and talk about their feelings and experiences in a way that makes most sense to them.