The idea for this project arose first and foremost from the financial difficulties that have permeated much of Europe for several years. The The idea for this project arose first and foremost from the financial difficulties that have permeated much of Europe for several years. The last few years have witnessed a big part of the burden of austerity being heaped onto the shoulders of the continent’s young people. We, the project group, felt there was a need to look into this and see if we, in our professions, could contribute towards something positive.This project was based on a couple of identified needs that we observed in the various participating countries. First, we saw a need for more effective and innovative instruments to encourage young people to become more aware and educated on how to manage one’s private economy. To become financially literate, to put it differently. This need was in large part based on the financial difficulties much of Europe has been going through over the last several years, and which persists still. Second, we found it to be an ongoing need to have more competence and understanding of conflict management among young people. We see clear links between the macro- and the micro level on this topic. Lastly, we had an idea of combining these two areas to attempt to provide concrete tools, especially to group of young people with fewer opportunities, to deal more constructively with troubling situations of financial difficulty without resorting to conflict.Communication about the initial ideas started between a few of the partners who knew each other well from a long list of previous collaborations. The project rationale and a couple of concrete ideas were then shared down the network of acquainted trainers, youth workers and organisations. All partners have been involved in this project based on their special competence or experience related to one or both of the concrete tools the project group wanted to develop. The centrepiece of this project has been to develop and produce two educational and interactive board games, to address financial literacy and conflict management - “Real Ideal” and “Mission Z”, respectively.The project has been undertaken with 10 formal partners, with one external partner that has also been involved throughout the whole project - including holding a crucial role in the actual production of all the game pieces for what has become “Real Ideal” and “Mission Z”. It was an important criterion for us that all the involved organisations, companies and informal groups are involved as directly as possible in field youth work or local community building.The results include that each partner now is in possession of 1 complete set of “Mission Z” and 4 complete sets of “Real Ideal”, attractively designed and formed in multipurpose materials. All game pieces have been handmade in a village in Portugal, and has thus created some employment during the project period, as well as improved the capacity of the same village and its people to produce more output of a similar sort in the future.Our testing of the concepts for both games has been rigorous. In total we have tested the two games with 653 participants who have all provided us with written feedback. This has enabled us to modify the games during the project period and adjust for input offered to us by the actual target group for both games, the young people themselves. The feedback from these participants has been overwhelmingly positive, across the board. This is the main thing for us, and gives us a feeling of having contributed well to the field of youth work and non-formal learning methods.The outputs of this project has also reached other circles, such as banks and universities that are keen on utilising these games in their education of financial literacy and conflict management, respectively. Some concrete partnerships along these lines have already been formalised.For more, and updated information also after the project’s end, we invite the reader to visit our website: http://bb-games.eu

Strong young minds is a strategic partnership project focused on innovation in education, proposed by five organizations from Iceland, Spain, Portugal and Romania, from the fields of mental health and education. The main purpose of the project is to create tools for mental health education for teenagers from Iceland, Romania, Portugal and Spain and to multiply the results among youth workers and educators at a local, national and European level.The objectives are: to increase the capacity of partner organisations to address the mental health educational needs of young people in their communities; to develop a training curriculum, a handbook, a board game, a web page and a series of videos, as tools for mental health education for young people aged 14-18; to facilitate the use of the mental health education tools by youth workers around Europe. The project will focus on teenagers aged 14-18, as main beneficiaries of the curriculum and board game that will be developed and on youth workers, as the ones who will use all the new pedagogical tools for educating the young people on mental health topics. Approximately 500 teenagers and youth workers will participate in the creation, development, testing and multiplication of the project outcomes. The project will include local activities such as needs analysis with teenagers and youth workers, testing activities with teenagers, online and offline dissemination activities, multiplier training courses and a few international ones, such as three work meetings for the development of the tools and coordination of the project, an international testing training course. The methodology used in the project will be mostly non-formal, especially when working directly with the target groups, but also during the local and transnational work meetings of the project team. It will combine theoretical knowledge with brainstorming, work in groups, role plays, arts, team-building activities, open space etc.As a result of their participation in testing the educational tools, teenagers will develop skills derived from the tools themselves, such as building identity, healthy relationships and lifestyle, emotional management, while the youth workers will be better prepared for educating teenagers on mental health topics. The project will have a wider impact, on various levels. The teenagers and youth workers who will use the tools after the completion of the project, will benefit in the same way as mentioned above. The partner organizations and other stake holder organizations will have increased capacity for working with youth, on mental health education, with non-formal methods, in intercultural teams, in long-term projects, under the Erasmus+ program.