The Don’t Worry, Be You is a project funded by Erasmus+ that was developed as a response to the adverse effects that global Covid-19 pandemic and other events of global magnitude have had on young people, such as increased sense of isolation, a lack of purpose, anxiety and loneliness. Thus, with this project we aim to empower young people to reconnect with themselves, their communities and the outer world and to foster their resilience and well being both on the individual and collective level for a happier and more fulfilled life.
The expression Don’t Worry, Be You didn’t come from nowhere. What gathered our team of youth workers, project managers and NGO leaders was the fact that all of us, together with the young people we work with, deal with a lot of stress, responsibilities and deadlines. In some ways we all experience exhaustion, we joggle with too many balls at the same time and feel lost in life more often than we would like to admit. All of these challenges brought our team of partners together and we dedicated three years to develop tools that can support young people and their mentors and educators to
- take care of their mental health and wellbeing
- design mindful educational programmes that raise awareness about the importance of mental health and foster resilience and wellbeing.
It is time that mental health is invited into the room! And this includes:
- raising awareness about our feelings and needs
- including our bodies into the learning process through embodied practices
- taking moments to breathe in and out
- building more intimate connection with ourselves
- creating stronger and deeper connections with others
- learning how to mindfully communicate with one another
- taking accountability for our lives
- challenging our beliefs and perspectives
- daring to have fun and enjoy life!
We offer you various instruments and you can pick the one that serves you the best. Mix and match, the secret is in your own creativity. In our offer you can find:
- An interactive WELLBEING GUIDEBOOK full of exercises, examples and theoretical pieces!
- EMBODIMENT VIDEO TUTORIALS that invite you to bring more movement and flow in your life or educational programme.
- A set of 21 MINDFULNESS CHALLENGES each being accompanied with a PODCAST episode. They are fun and will invite you to come out of your comfort zone.
- GOOD DEEDS GAME that will bring fun into your community and strengthen bonds in your classroom, among friends, neighbours…
Execution
This program is executed by project manager Niels Koldewijn of FairGround in collaboration with partners of Don’t Worry Be You. Created materials are available and can be downloaded on www.dontworrybeyou.org under creative common license.