Youth Participate problems and solutions I.
Youth Participate: problems and solutions I.
Educating young people in youth participation using digital storytelling
In spring 2021, during lockdowns, we piloted youth participation education in an online environment, You(TH) Participate! We would like to present its results and outputs
Below you will find the problems of young people in the Košice region, identified by the young participants themselves along with the solutions they propose. When describing the identified data, we retain the language and phrasing of young people, which may not correspond to professional terms. We do this to preserve the perspective of young people:
Problem 1: Insufficient psychological support for the mental health of young people
Causes: Lack of awareness among young people about mental disorders and their pitfalls; Poor help from psychologists, short working hours of psychologists in schools.
Possible consequences of the problem: Unresolved mental disorders; Impaired performance at school or at work; Social stigma around psychological counseling and mental health work.
Solutions: Establishment of a Facebook group dedicated to strengthening the mental health of young people and educating them in this regard. The group can be led by a peer approach. Its content can consist of anonymous confessions from peers. Organization of educational events on the topic led by experts – education should use non-formal education methods and should be targeted at high school youth.
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Problem 2: Insufficient solution to environmental pollution (EP) and poor waste recycling options
Causes: Poor public awareness of the need for environmental protection and waste recycling; Absence of community composters in the city of Košice; Laziness, carelessness of citizens, Insufficient accessibility of recycling bins – especially clothing bins, insufficient number of collection containers for individual waste categories – often a paper container is missing, etc.
Possible consequences of not addressing the problem: Deteriorated environmental quality in the city we live in; Soil contamination; Polluted rivers; Contaminated groundwater
Solutions: Participants are willing to contribute to solutions by organizing waste collections in their area, organizing workshops in schools on the need to protect the environment and recycle waste, creating an information campaign on the need for community composters in the city.
