Stress PAndemic Board GAME for Adult Training (SPAGAME)

The partnership's motivation to develop the project stemmed mainly from the lack of useful tools and interactive games in dealing with the pre-stages and stages of pandemic burnout in our and other trainers' individual and group coaching work with adults. These issues are addressed with a variety of approaches, from coaching and therapy to mindfulness and emotional intelligence, to NLP and emotional flexibility, to meditation, to design thinking, reducing workload and working hours, etc. The aim of the two participating organizations from Bulgaria and Belgium was to give opportunities to young people and adults systems and design thinking tools to use SPAGAME to help their clients reduce the negative effects of burnout on their motivation and productivity and to support them to contribute intellectually and expertly to their environment.

Our goal was to support adult educators, our direct target group, by providing them with a board game (SPAGAME) to use when working with adults to deal with the different stages of pandemic burnout, such as fatigue, anxiety, high levels of occupational stress, conflict of tasks and high perfectionism. The overall objective of the SPAGAME project was to improve the competences of adult educators through coaching, mentoring and training to develop the self-awareness and clarity of young adults and adult learners, reduce the risk of burnout due to a pandemic in working life and equip them with tools for flourishing, for conscious leadership, purposefulness, determination and contribution to the development of others and oneself. To achieve our goals, we structured our project activities around the development of the Stress PANDemic Board GAME for adult learners (SPAGAME). In the game development process, we aimed to improve both our own competencies and those of the wider target audience, as we involved adult trainers in the game development process to ensure that the outcome of the developed project meets their specific needs.

Project activities included: Activity 1: Project Management and Coordination. The main objective of the project management and coordination activity was aimed at managing the partnership during the project to ensure effective coordination and cooperation within the project, monitoring progress and implementation of project activities within the agreed schedule and budget. Activity 2: Development of SPAGAME and Manual. For the purpose of developing a suitable Stress PANDEMIC BOARD GAME for adult educators, we decided to implement the following strategy: - Design of a game prototype and draft of a Manual for it; - Testing: After the game prototype and the draft of the Manual were developed, each participating organization conducted a focus group session at the local level to familiarize the target groups with the proposed game design and structure of the Manual and collect feedback from participants. - Piloting: After the relevant focus group proposals have been discussed and approved by the partnership to pilot the outcome of the project, each partner conducted in his country training with representatives of the target group, in other words, Training of Trainers in an adult training session. Activity 3: Sharing and Promotion.

Concrete outputs and other results of the project: - Design, prototyping, testing and piloting of the SPAGAME board game in two language versions - Bulgarian and English. At the level of substance and process, the game represents a new kind of methodological approach to the topics of pandemic burnout. The design of the SPAGAME contains several innovative solutions: the game board is made of vinyl textile; all game elements are collected in cardboard tubes of small sizes, convenient for transportation; each game contains alternative pawns - wooden pawns or stones placed in small bags with lavender sprigs. - Development, testing and piloting of the game Manual (Guide) - in Bulgarian and English. - Conducting focus groups with 10 adult trainers in Bulgaria and Belgium to get feedback on the test version of the game and the Manual. - Training materials. Developed a training program for the train-the-trainers for adults. - Conducting trainings for a total of 10 adult trainers in Bulgaria and in Belgium (Train-the-trainers sessions). - Conducting of multiplier events for multiplying the results of the project for over 70 representatives of the stakeholders in Bulgaria and Belgium. - Creation of Facebook page for the project.