Youth for Mental Health of Youth: meet our new project HOORAY
Health and well-being of young people have been two of the more important topics ENGSO Youth has been prioritizing in its strategy over the past couple of years.
After establishment of the health working group and release of the position paper on mental health and youth sport, we pledged to the European Commission’s HealthyLifestyle4all initiative in 2021, and committed to raise awareness on the importance of sport and physical activity in improving the well-being and mental health of European youth.
In 2022, we expanded our work in the field of health, by joining the European Commission’s Youth Ideas Lab which served as a platform to connect youth voices with the Commissioners and policy makers, and develop five initiatives proposals on the topic of youth, sport and health.
In our quest to improve the mental health, well-being and quality of life of the young generation, by using sport and physical activity as a tool, our 2023 agenda kicked off with the start of a new Erasmus+ Sport funded project – HOORAY.
Even before the pandemic, the mental health of young people, particularly teenagers, has been declining. The HOORAY (Youth for Youth’s Mental Health through Physical Activity) project aims to address this challenge by exploring the impact and positive influence physical activity and sport can have on improving the overall well-being and mental health of young people.
Based on the EU Physical Activity Guidelines, the project team will collect good practices, and develop educational resources and an online knowledge hub for physical education teachers, youth workers, coaches, parents and other personnel working with teens that want to put more attention on mental health and health enhancing physical activity, and prioritize participation and well-being of youth over performance, pressure and results.
Those resources and activities will target both, youngsters that are already physically active or enrolled in sport activities, and those who have been inactive and/or dropping out of sport. Young people will play a key role as we will take a closer look at physical activity through the lens of teenagers and explore how they perceive sport and its impact on their well-being.
The HOORAY project started 1st of January 2023 and will continue for 30 months until 30th of June 2025. The kick-off meeting is scheduled for 16th and 17th of February 2023 in Munich, Germany.
