As mentioned in the previous news articles, the Safe Space 4 Youth project is at its most active stage of implementation. Each project partner has had the opportunity to run workshops on mental health, youth and peer leadership with a group of local youth. In the case of Spain we travelled to the municipality of Massanassa to carry out this intervention with young people from the local Municipal Youth Centre.

The group of young people participated in a first training workshop that aimed to give them basic information about mental health and how to detect in which state we are. In the same course we analysed their mental health status, talked about how they can manage different stressful situations and how they themselves can be leaders for other young people in more unfavourable situations. We had a moment of joint reflection and then a moment of artistic expression where they had the freedom to express themselves through art and to show their feelings and their current state of mental health. In the next session we explained to them how they themselves can be leaders and train or support other young people. This triggered in them a need to act and to implement a workshop similar to the one we did with them on the first day with other young people from another locality.

In view of this interest, we organised ourselves and after this session we met with them to organise this workshop, buy the materials and prepare the session sheets. They organised everything themselves, from our side there was only logistical and financial support.

The young women had the opportunity to implement this workshop with the young people of the Municipal Youth Centre of the city of Picassent. It was a very inspiring experience for them as well as for the young people who participated and it gave them confidence in themselves.

We generated with the young women a video summary of the event that you can find on our Instagram and on the project’s Instagram.