Me&We
Behind project Me&We
Young Danes are more competent and responsible than ever before, but their social well-being is in pretty bad shape. They are constantly told that anything is possible – that the world is their oyster if they just make the right choices. And most young people thrive and successfully navigate those endless opportunities. But a growing number of them are battling stress, pressure and loneliness, and the lives of far too many young people are stalling from social stagnation.
Through a collaborative project aimed at Danish ‘efterskoler’ (independent residential schools for 14 to 18-year-old students), The Mary Foundation, Just Human, the Danish Efterskole Association and the Tuborg Foundation want to combine existing knowledge about young people’s social well-being with their own suggestions on what is needed to create a generation of young people who find support and strength among one another.
The project includes a series of activities and exercises designed to, among other things, get young people to think about how they create and keep the social relationships they need.
Danish efterskoler educate a broad and representative section of the country’s youth, and over 30,000 young people started at one of these schools this year. The fact that these schools have been chosen as the framework for this development work is therefore no coincidence.
The goal of the project is to arrive at a series of materials that are in sync with school life, are meaningful to the students and teachers, and strengthen their social well-being and prospects for contributing to a socially robust young generation – individually and together. If it lives up to expectations, the project will be offered to all Danish efterskoler in the 2021/2022 academic year.
Knowledge sharing is a high priority for the project and both lessons learned and interventions will be shared with other interested parties. We have therefore also already anticipated that the project, or certain aspects of the project, could potentially be offered to the senior years in secondary school or tertiary institutions, for example.
Loneliness
We all feel lonely every now and then; this is a natural part of life. But when the loneliness moves on from being short-lived and situation-specific to being persistent, it becomes damaging to our health and social life. Long-term loneliness is damaging to our health and can destroy our social skills. Loneliness remains an overlooked problem - despite the significant human costs.