RECOVER: Youth Wellbeing Recovering Kit

About the project

RECOVER: Youth Wellbeing Recovering Kit is an Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnership in the field of youth, coordinated by Zdrowy Kształt Życia S.C. in Poland with partners from Austria, Croatia and Latvia. It ran from October 2024 to May 2026, and its tools help youth workers recognise early signs of mental health difficulties, respond with empathy and guide young people towards professional help when needed. Its message is simple: recognise, respond, support.

The project responds to a critical gap. Around one in five young people aged 16 to 25 experience mental health problems, yet most do not receive professional help in time. Youth workers are often the first trusted adults young people turn to in moments of distress, but most have never received structured training in mental health. RECOVER does not replace specialised care. It gives youth workers the confidence to notice warning signs, hold supportive conversations and refer young people to the right professionals.

EMOTiC brings its expertise in non-formal education, youth work capacity building and European cooperation. With EAST (Croatia) and Ecological Future Education (Latvia), the partnership co-designed practical resources with and for youth workers. A distinctive feature is the Dragon Dreaming approach, a co-creative method in which young people and youth workers design the tools together, so that they reflect how young people actually experience their own wellbeing.

In March 2025 EMOTiC ran a one-day participatory workshop in Vienna with 15 young people and five youth workers, guided by the Healing Dragons manual. Participants pictured their worries as "dragons", drew them or modelled them in clay, carried out a SWOT analysis of youth mental health in Austria and closed the day with a personal "hero's pledge". Before leaving they set up a WhatsApp group to keep supporting each other, and 90% said they felt more confident talking about mental health. The insights are captured in the Austria National Summary Report.

The main result is the Youth Workers Capacitation Toolkit, free in English, German, Polish, Croatian and Latvian. Its more than 70 pages include assessment tools such as a Weekly Mood Tracker and a Daily Stress Jar, a wellbeing framework explaining how stigma works, six modules on anxiety, depression, loneliness, low self-esteem, digital overload and helplessness, methods such as art therapy and forest therapy adapted for non-formal settings, and a complete four-day workshop agenda.

It is written for youth workers, trainers and educators working with young people aged roughly 14 to 30 in youth centres, NGOs, sports clubs and schools, and no clinical background is required. Print-ready companion materials, such as questionnaires, role cards and a quick-start guide, are free to download in all five languages under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence. The project's virtual library also holds the Healing Dragons manual and policy recommendations that aim to make youth mental health a lasting part of youth work in Europe.