With the project 'Once Upon YOUR Time' we will provide opportunities for teachers to support their students’ mental health. Through storytelling-based methods the project focuses especially on students with fewer opportunities or at risk of social exclusion. We aim to use personal storytelling to understand the processes that make our life meaningful, whatever the circumstance lived.
Follow the project on Facebook @OnceUponYourTimeErasmusPlus

The 'Once Upon YOUR Time' is an international project funded by Erasmus+ involving four organisations: Youth Reach Centers of Reykjavik (Iceland), Institute for Research and Training in Education (Slovenia), YOMN network (Spain) and The Surefoot Effect (Scotland).

​The Erasmus+ project "Sustainability, Heritage, Health" officially started on March 16 with the kick-off meeting. Due to the pandemic and the current travel limitations the meeting took place online, instead of us all meeting up in Scotland. Partners Ziniu Kodas from Lithuania, Innovation Frontiers from Greece and the Centre for Ecological Studies AbrazoHouse from Spain joined The Surefoot Effect to initiate project activities.
 
The meeting took place over 3 2hr sessions where we discussed the general plans for this 3-year project, including management, monitoring, quality control, evaluation and dissemination activities as well as the four main activities of the project: 1) the creation of a walking programme with three different routes in each partner country that will include mindfulness activities and an exploration of local sustainability initiatives; 2) a recipe book with 40 recipes from partner countries showcasing the use of traditional and more sustainable ways of growing food; 3) an online project platform and a mobile application that will hold the walking routes and the recipes; and, lastly, 4) a project handbook that will summarise the experiences of the partners and suggest a path forward for organisations and individuals to engage with and initiate similar projects and activities.
 
We used Zoom breakout rooms to get to know each other one to one, simulating the coffee break times as if we were in person. As next steps, partners discussed ideas for a project logo and will be meeting again soon to speak about the content for the walking routes in each partner country.

The website for the Erasmus+ project "Breakthrough for Resilience: People, Places and Communities" has a new look. You can access it here: 
www.resilienceproject.eu 
Mobilizing Expertise, the project's Swedish partner, has been working on the website's glossy end, which we all like. Everyone can now access the resilience tools that partners have been preparing for several months. The tools are divided into the three main categories of the project: people, places and communities.

The site includes blog posts, information about the project, a description of the project partners, what is resilience, project news and any past newsletters, including an option to sign up to receive any future editions:
 http://resilienceproject.eu/elementor-483/

Together with partners in the Erasmus+ project 'Once Upon Your time', we are looking into creating tools to support and strengthen the mental health of children and young people. We will focus mainly on storytelling methodologies and case studies from the four participating countries: Iceland, Slovenia, Spain and the UK. 
We will soon start writing a series of essays on the themes: 1) storytelling as a pedagogical tool, 2) storytelling and mental health, 3) storytelling and personal development in children and young people, and 4) storytelling in the formal education setting.
​We look forward to sharing the stories with you! More to follow during the year.

It was a day of joy and creativity when Pam and Euri from Surefoot ran a pilot workshop to test and showcase tools we have found in research across the 3 aspects: people, communities and places. It was thrilling to witness how people had fun when opening up their creativity, and how this was a portal to build resilience. The main tools covered in the workshop were: 
1. Resilience Compass, 2. Wheel of Life, 3. Mandala making, 4. Tree Visualisation, 5. Let’s Draw and 6. Restoration and re-evaluation - Cascina Bert, nature conservation.
The participants fed back that the tools are useful for introspective journeying and to understand what is good and healthy for people and society. They also thought the tools will be useful in the economic and social context for mapping, making changes and importantly making sense of our “new normal."
Read about the tools and the project's organisations in the report: Breakthrough for Resilience - pilot workshop.

​An ideas catalogue with environmental initiatives and new ways of viewing climate challenges are some of the outcomes DuPont in Denmark experienced when running Carbon Conversations (CC) groups with colleagues. 

We are thrilled that our 3-year project 'Sustainability, Heritage, Health' (SHH) has just received Erasmus + funding! ​

Euri Vidal from Surefoot was a student at the University of Cape Town in 2006 and wrote the article ‘The Cape Town Water Crisis, White Man-Made Climate Change, and the Road to Sharpeville’.
The article focuses on climate justice by arguing that white people in the Global North are primarily responsible for climate change and people of colour in the Global South will be the most affected. In this case, it is the poor South Africans of Cape Town, predominantly black people, who are currently suffering the consequences of the Cape Town water crisis more disproportionally.

To contribute to the fight against climate change, the Spanish National Committee proposed the International Office to carry out a small environmental sustainability project that started in April 2018 to help six other National Committees (NC) to reduce their environmental impact. The committees of Macedonia, Uruguay, Mexico, Portugal, Costa Rica and Thailand agreed to implement a series of actions to make their pre-selection and selection processes more environmentally friendly. This project was inspired in the work of the Spanish National Committee and the reduction of the environmental impact that its activities and alumni had during the selection year 2017-18. The Spanish NC also implemented activities during its annual summer programme 'ActionxChange' and during its winter short course 'ActionxPeace'.