Sharing experience, knowledge and best practices: How to address the topic of mental health in international Workcamps?

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), mental disorders affect one in four people worldwide. Many of these people do not seek help. This is due to a combination of several barriers that we encounter in our society: lack of awareness of the area of ​​mental health, lack of information on how to recognize the symptoms of depression, the social stigma that tells us that asking for help is a sign of weakness…
In 'PAIN', a project co-funded by the European Union's Erasmus+ program, INEX-SDA from Czech Republic and IBG from Germany have been working together from 2024-2025 to deepen knowledge and awareness of mental health and well-being in the context of international voluntary services such as Workcamps. The project aimed at making international volunteering projects (even) more inclusive and to promote equality and non-discrimination.

Outcomes
The materials created are available to all group leaders in order to strengthen their self-confidence and their ability to recognize potential mental health problems in the camp with empathy and to respond to them appropriately.

LINK ---- mental disorders affect one in four people worldwide

Watch videos here:
Download workshop plans here:

From April 11th till14th, 2025, we met with 10 camp leaders and trainers from both organizations in Toulcův dvůr, Prague, to join us in discussing and further developing materials for group leaders and camp coordinators that deal with this topic.
Mental health, both of volunteers and group leaders, plays an important role in our camps. We do not expect our group leaders to be professional therapists or to already have extensive professional background knowledge. Instead, we want to equip them with accessible tools, methods and knowledge to master challenging situations well.
In the hub in Prague, we shared experiences from different international volunteering projects in different countries and discussed different aspects of mental health and well-being. We tested two different workshop concepts related to the topic and modified these with the feedback of the group to use them in future trainings and meetings with group leaders.
Furthermore, we identified together the aspects most relevant especially to group leaders in the Workcamp context. From these, 4 topics were selected and through a participatory video process, 4 groups created different short videos to be used to raise awareness and give support to camp leaders on how to deal with different mental health issues in Workcamps.