The Mind Body Spirit of Us - MBS

Project Description:
The aim of this training course is to share and exchange knowledge and good practices between active youth workers working with youth field of healthier lifestyles. We will share information on how to educate and inspire youngsters, their peers and environment about nutrition, exercise, body awareness and other related areas affecting young people in all of our communities, using proven non-formal methodologies. Mind (M), Body (B), Spirit (S)

Youth workers are confronted with the fact that not only the overall health of a lot of youngsters is diminishing but moreover that an increasing number of them are suffering from modern diseases caused by an unhealthy lifestyle. We have seen an increase in diabetes, obesity and even more life threatening illness in young people, and we feel it is important to target the causes of these very early in the lives of young people.

One of the major current challenges for youth workers is how to reach these youngsters and give them adequate answers and support on these specific topics. A lot of youngsters and their environment have a clear lack of interest in sports, rest, healthy food and general wellbeing. It seems that lately everybody talks about eating healthier or wants to stop bad habits such as smoking or drinking too much alcohol but in most cases, do not know how to go about it. Youth workers can be instrumental in supporting youngsters in their endeavours but in order to do so they will need to gain more knowledge and acquire the right guidance tools.

As our team has diverse knowledge and experience and passion for balanced and healthy lifestyles we think it is important to organize this project and we want to help youth workers on how to face this challenge. We will do so in a very practice-oriented way and provide our participants with specific answers, tools and methods. This in order so that they can use these tools and methods directly upon return and get real results with them.

Our goal is not only to spread adequate knowledge and information able to inspire young people to become the best version of themselves but also to give them very practical tools to reach this goal. We aim to give the youth workers the tools to empower young people and encourage them to want to love healthier lives and understand the reason for and behind their lifestyle choices.

For that we need to raise and address different topics, all of which are important in our lives. We will talk about 12 subjects which we claim all have to be in balance to live a healthy and fulfilling life!

The circle of life:

1. Creativity
2. Finances
3. Career
4. Education
5. Health
6. Physical activity
7. Home cooking
8. Home environment
9. Relationships
10. Social life
11. Joy
12. Spirituality

The specific issues that will be addressed in this project are physical and mental health problems concerning youngsters. These could include to name a few: illnesses like burnout, diabetes, obesity, adrenal fatigue, depression, ….
We will look to how we, as youth workers, can help them, in the correct way, to improve these areas.

By covering these 12 topics we will give youth workers the possibility to spread a holistic lifestyle in their communities and amongst their youngsters. The aim is to reach as many youngsters as possible (but also their environment) and to inspire each other by spreading the word on these essential topics present in our day-to-day life. The aim is to strive for positive changes when it comes to health and well-being, to go for a healthier lifestyle as it is clearly necessary in our society, to help to avoid a lot of health problems and diseases and give an answer on an actual societal issue.