COPE

About This Project

COPE

COncrete PEer to peer solutions and support among youth for mentally coping

with the anxiety and stress associated with the COVID-19 pandemic

Duration: 24 months (September 2022 – September 2024)

The overall objective of COPE is to address the negative effects of the war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 crisis on youth’s mental health by strengthening key protective factors via digitized peer support through art. The focus is on disadvantaged youth at risk, young people mostly in a transition situation: fleeing from conflict-affected territories, dropping out from school, leaving work, affected by poverty and unemployment, or with disabilities.

The COPE Project addresses the need for new data, approaches, and educational opportunities to improve young people’s health and well-being and resources for coping with war and pandemic, while highlighting the need for enhancing the capacity and digital readiness of youth workers, along with the creation of new skills’ recognition pathways for improved employment and mobility opportunities via a digitalized arts-based peer support approach.

The focus is put on the most vulnerable groups and particularly on young people at risk of

social exclusion and affected by war. The target groups of the COPE project are:

TG1: Disadvantaged young people experiencing negative effects due to the pandemic crisis and conflict.

TG2: Youth workers and leaders

TG3: Youth organizations including volunteer youth workers from the non-formal and informal education sectors.

Activities implemented under the COPE project will be as follows:

• Mapping of the specific psychosocial challenges of youth during the post Covid-19 period and identification of state-of-the-art psychosocial support programs for youth (WP2).
• Designing and developing a digital learning platform for peer-to-peer support under the guidance of youth workers based on the identified needs (WP3).
• Delivering capacity-building training for youth workers and piloting the implementation of the peer-to-peer support training scheme (WP4).

5 project outputs are going to be developed:

• 5 national reports and 1 transnational report, which includes a needs analysis based on original on-site research to better understand the challenges to the mental health of young people in the partner countries, posed by war and conflict as well as the COVID-19-related measures.
• A capacity-building program for youth workers in the 5 partner countries that empowers them to support young people that face stress under the current situation, with a focus on heritage elements and art education to advance the cultural awareness of the participants as well as to improve young people’s employability and mobility opportunities.
• An online platform that hosts the educational program – curriculum with the aim of equipping youth workers with all necessary skills.
• Pilot training of disadvantaged youths by 60 youth workers from 5 countries on the developed curriculum.
• Dissemination events in each of the partner countries with the aim of raising awareness of the impact on mental health posed by the COVID-19 measures as well as the ongoing conflicts and how to counter them with the means developed in this project.

Partners:

Youth Included ZS (Czech Republic) – Coordinator

VAEV Research and Development Agency GmbH (Austria)

IDEC (Greece)

Innovation Training Center, S.L. (Spain)

Jugend- & Kulturprojekt e.V. (Germany)

Symplexis (Greece)

The project is co-financed by the European Commission through the Erasmus+ Programme

The European Commission’ssupport for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.