According to the recent Eurofund survey, all EU countries were negatively affected by the pandemic. In spring 2021, there was an overall increase in negative feelings, anxiety, loneliness, and depression, across most social groups. An increase in depressive feelings was recorded particularly among younger groups; 64% of young adults (18–34 years) are at risk of depression, while the highest increase in loneliness was recorded for senior citizens.
We plan to achieve this goal by developing an educational program and a non-formal learning methodology focused on improving physical health and psychological well-being of people suffering from long-term negative consequences of the Corona crisis.
The adult education program will be focused on developing lifestyle skills that will help learners to cope with the psychological stress, to build resilience in the face of loss and grief, to share negative experiences with their peers and to gain psychological support. The innovative non-formal learning methodology for adult educators will be based on storytelling and will help to improve the competences of educators in dealing with vulnerable groups suffering from negative physical and mental consequences of the global health crisis.
Storytelling is a powerful tool that helps people to make sense of stressful events and traumatic experience. By telling their stories, people from vulnerable groups, including young adults and elderly citizens will gain agency and the sense of control of their life. Storytelling as a non-formal learning methodology will help in building resilience, positive thinking, coping with loss and grief and getting support from peers and healthcare professionals. This methodology will be used to develop a webinar for adult educators working with vulnerable groups (young adults and senior citizens).
Participants will be able to improve their competences of giving support to vulnerable groups by encouraging storytelling, active listening and empathy. We also plan to develop an online course for people suffering from the negative consequences of Covid-19 crisis, focusing on two groups: young adults and senior citizens. Both young adults and senior citizens suffered from the limitation on their physical and social activities that negatively affected their physical and psychological health. However, their challenges are different. While young adults could compensate the lack of social contacts by using digital networks, senior people often lack digital skills.
On the other hand, senior citizens have more resilience, simply because they experience more negative events in their life. By sharing their experiences and co-creating solutions these two groups can help each other to get back to normal life.
- Teacher: System Administrator