RECOVER: Empowering youth workers to support young people's mental health

As part of the RECOVER project, Youth Wellbeing Recovering Kit, the partnership of Austria, Croatia, Latvia and Poland has produced a comprehensive, multilingual Youth Workers Capacitation Toolkit. Designed for youth workers, trainers, educators and facilitators, it provides practical and accessible methods for supporting young people's mental wellbeing in non-formal education settings. The toolkit is now freely available in five languages, and you can download it below.

Why this matters

• Rising need: 1 in 5 young people aged 16–25 experience mental health problems, yet most do not receive professional help in time.
• Urgent pressures: academic overload, online comparison, economic uncertainty and the lingering effects of COVID-19 are placing increasing strain on young people's emotional wellbeing.
• Training gap: most youth workers have never received structured training in mental health first response, even though they are often the first trusted adults young people turn to in moments of distress.
• RECOVER's aim: equip youth workers with practical, youth-centred tools and give young people real ownership of their wellbeing journey.

"Youth workers are often trusted adults who provide safe, informal spaces for reflection, expression and growth. They are uniquely positioned to embed wellbeing into everyday programmes."

About the RECOVER project

RECOVER is an Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnership in the field of youth, coordinated by Zdrowy Kształt Życia S.C. (Poland) and uniting partners from Austria, Croatia and Latvia. The project responds to a critical gap: youth workers are often the first trusted adults young people turn to in moments of distress, yet most have received no structured training in mental health.

EMOTiC (European Multidisciplinary Organization for Training and international Consulting, Austria) is a key partner in RECOVER, contributing expertise in non-formal education, youth work capacity building and European-level cooperation. Together with EAST (Croatia) and Ecological Future Education (Latvia), the partnership co-designed practical resources directly with and for youth workers across Europe.

A distinctive feature of RECOVER is its use of the Dragon Dreaming approach, a co-creative methodology that involves young people themselves in designing the tools, so that they respond to how young people actually experience their own wellbeing.

What the toolkit contains

The RECOVER Youth Workers Capacitation Toolkit is structured in five interconnected parts, all immediately applicable in youth work settings:

1. Assessment tools: a Weekly Mood Tracker, Daily Stress Jar and Monthly Self-Reflection sheets that help young people build emotional literacy and self-awareness over time.
2. Wellbeing framework: clear explanations of the key pillars of mental health, the difference between mental health and wellbeing, and how stigma operates and can be dismantled.
3. Six challenge modules: dedicated chapters on fear and anxiety, depression, loneliness, low self-esteem, digital overload and helplessness, with recognition cues and response strategies for each.
4. Good practice methods: therapeutic approaches adapted for non-formal settings, including art therapy, forest therapy and Jacobson's Progressive Muscle Relaxation.
5. A complete four-day workshop agenda: a full facilitation guide covering trust-building, self-care tools, youth support skills and integration, ready to run as a training event, plus facilitator checklists, monitoring templates and participant feedback forms.

Who it is for

The toolkit is designed for youth workers, trainers, educators, facilitators and coaches working with young people aged roughly 14–30 in non-formal education settings: youth centres, NGOs, community organisations, sports clubs and schools. No clinical background is required. The toolkit is accessible, practical and grounded in everyday youth work.

Read and download the toolkit

The RECOVER Toolkit is free, multilingual and open for use, adaptation and sharing under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence.

Feel free to cite, adapt and replicate the tools in your own community. We'd love to hear how you use them!