Supporting Volunteer's Mental Health through Mentoring

Mentoring Promotes Mental Health

Supporting Volunteers’ Mental Health through Mentoring training focuses on supporting organisations and their mentors to better address the mental health needs of volunteers by strengthening their emotional and mental health skills.

Moreover, this training prepares the participants to recognise the support needed in different phases of volunteering project life cycle.

In this training you will gain an ability to

• Equip volunteers with coping mechanisms to build up resilience
• Create a supportive environment where open communication about mental health is encouraged
• Recognise potential signs of mental health difficulties in volunteers
• Prepare your organisation for potential challenges that volunteers may face

Objectives

• Raising awareness of mental health in the mentoring practices
• Developing mentor’s competences in supporting volunteers' mental health
• Understanding the role of mentors in promoting mental health in volunteering projects
• Explore practices useful in creation of supportive mental health environments

Mental Health from a preventive perspective

This training discusses mental health from the perspective of promotion and prevention.

In this training we do not approach mental health from the point of view of diagnosis, therapy or healing – these approaches belong to the professional work outside the work of European Solidarity Corps volunteering organisations.

Who can participate?

The training is open for you if you

• are working directly with European Solidarity Corps volunteers
• are working in a supporting role for volunteers
• are working in an organisation with a valid Quality Label for hosting

You can be a mentor, a tutor, a project coordinator or the main contact for volunteers in your organisation. It is important that your role is to support volunteers in their volunteering project.

The training is especially useful for you if you need better understanding on how to support the volunteers’ mental health in your work. No prior knowledge on mental health is needed.

This training is not open for mental health professionals, such as therapists, psychologists, clinical personnel.

Time and venue

The training will be hosted in Hotel Majvik, Kirkkonummi, Finland

• Arrival on Sunday September 6
• Departure on Friday September 11

Preparatory tasks

The participants who are selected to join the training course will receive preparatory tasks. They will be discussed on an online premeeting before the residential training.

Online pre meeting is organised on August 31 at 15.00-17.00 CET in ZOOM and we expect the selected participants to join the pre meeting. 

Programme

• Day 1: What is mental health and what is my role in promoting it?
• Day 2: How stress affects me and volunteers. What can we do about it?
• Day 3: How can I support volunteers in distress?
• Day 4: What is my organisational and personal support system?

Safe, accessible and sustainable

In this event, we follow the principles of a safer space. We strive to ensure that everyone is met as their own self and that no one has to fear discrimination or harassment. We want you to respect the same principle.

Our activities are accessible to people with different abilities. If you need a support person, accessible room and transport or other kind of support, we will provide it for you. You can tell your individual needs in beforehand so we can support you in your participation.

We take sustainability in consideration where we can. Since most participants have to fly over the sea to Finland, we encourage you to travel on land within Finland. We also encourage you to contact your own national agency to find out how they support low emission travelling to activities abroad.

We provide plant-based meals, or use locally grown and produced foods, as much as possible. We also respect the diets and food allergies of all participants.