Youth(4)Health

Background Youth organizations play an important role in the development and growth of young people, but at the same time, poor health is one of the biggest obstacles in reaching the potential of young people, and poor health care often translates into serious illnesses in later life periods. All of this has a key impact on the lives of young people throughout all periods of their lives. The data show that in the last ten years there has been a visible increase in health conditions among young people - especially mental and metabolic disorders. It is a group of diseases and medical conditions called chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs), which most affect the population in both the developed and the developing world. Because of their direct access to young people, youth organizations play a key role in addressing this social challenge. However, youth organizations are often not aware of their influence on young people and do not have enough knowledge, competences and skills to establish a suitable (safe) environment. According to these activities, we chose: as the main needs that we wanted to address. -Lack of advocacy and partnership/coalition skills -Lack of project management knowledge and skills. Most organizations manage projects, but due to the nature of youth/student organizations and the rapid turnover of members, they need them more knowledge -Great need for greater continuity of operations (which could potentially be provided by secretariats), but for which they need knowledge from more sustainable management of organizations. Objectives The overall purpose of the Youth Health project was to improve the health of young people in the associated countries, to connect the youth sector more closely and to establish intersectoral links for the implementation of a participatory model of policy-making in the fields of youth and health. As a smaller goal, we also set ourselves to transfer the impact of the project from only the youth sector to other areas and to increase the possibilities of participation of civil society - especially young people - in the democratic processes of policy formulation and adoption. We wanted to establish functioning youth coalitions for youth health, train them for further sustainable operation and long-term growth within the youth health sector, train a critical mass of young people to start systematically dealing with health, implement local health promotion initiatives and achieve changes within their organizations. In addition to coalitions, we also wanted to establish "Guidelines for healthy youth organizations", which would regulate systemic changes within youth organizations, which will provide a healthier environment for their members and work synergistically with the initiatives of youth health ambassadors. In addition to the rest, we wanted to conduct trainings for youth health ambassadors and advocates - with these trainings, national youth organizations would get a mass of young people - health ambassadors who will know effective approaches to ensure youth health and implement them in their local/national environment. We wanted to achieve introductions through local initiatives promoting a healthy lifestyle, organized by young people themselves with topics that are most important to them and their local environment. An important goal was also regular and sufficiently detailed evaluation and analysis at the end, the purpose of which was the exchange of good practices and their transfer beyond the framework of partner organizations. Implementation We implemented several activities during the duration of the project. Some were closely related to project management and ongoing evaluation: 4 meetings of project partners (in Slovenia, North Macedonia, Turkey and Slovenia), which also represented places in the timeline where we carried out a more in-depth evaluation, both current and final. Several intermediate meetings of the partners for a regular review of the implementation of the project and the search for possible points for immediate improvement already during the course of the project, carried out via the Zoom online platform; The bulk of the activities were represented by 3 international activities with young people: training for youth coalitions for youth health and advocacy of integrated policies in North Macedonia, training for youth health ambassadors in Turkey, final seminar in Slovenia. The seminar in North Macedonia served to form national coalitions, because various youth organizations working in the field of youth health joined together. At the second seminar in Turkey, representatives of organizations from national coalitions trained as health ambassadors, and at the same time drew up a plan for their national initiatives with the knowledge gained. Indirectly, through the empowerment of the participants of the previously mentioned activities to implement their own projects - local initiatives, we thus achieved the implementation of 12 local and national initiatives for health promotion. The implementation of these initiatives continued until the final seminar in Slovenia, where the projects and initiatives were also presented. Achievements During the duration of the project, the following project results were achieved - 3 established national youth coalitions for youth health - Quality indicators / healthy organization guidelines. - International competency model for health ambassadors - Curriculum for acquiring health ambassador competencies - Mentor system for youth health ambassadors - 18 trained youth health ambassadors who had mentoring support available throughout the duration of the project National coalitions were established in Slovenia, North Macedonia and Turkey. Coalitions consist of various youth organizations that work in the field of youth health. The representatives of the organizations that attended the first seminar included other relevant organizations working in the same field in the coalition. Both civil society associations and more specific associations of students in various medical fields were included.