Grant
The goal of the project is to teach mental health literacy and social-emotional competencies in the university space, which will contribute to the mental health and well-being of both students and university lecturers.
The purpose of the course is to teach social-emotional skills and prepare them for the prevention of professional burnout for elementary education bachelor students. The course will help future teachers manage their emotions and help create a positive psychological environment in the schools where they will work.
Grant objectives and working directions
The course covers important topics such as: psychosocial well-being and mental health, relationships, self-awareness, empathy and altruism, communication skills and critical thinking, stress management, student bullying, youth mental health issues, positive psychology, etc.
At this stage, the course is available for future teachers of primary education at the Faculty of Psychology and Education of Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (TSU).
In the future, it is planned to train lecturers from 5 universities: Ilia, Telavi, Kutaisi, Batumi and Caucasus universities. Trained lecturers will deliver the module to students of the primary education program.
The curriculum consists of 15 structured lessons that include experiential interactive activities and discussions.
The purpose of the module
learn more about psychosocial well-being;
develop skills to help maintain mental health;
The project consists of two stages:
1) Training of university lecturers, the project is held for 3 days and includes 15 topics.
2) Trained lecturers will conduct 15 lectures/workshops with primary education students.
Schedule of project’s main activities
Duration of the project: 24 months, from September 2023 to August 2025.
Grantee
Baltic to Black Sea Alliance – Georgia is a non- governmental organization registered in Georgia in 2009 with the aim to facilitate consolidation of free, democratic, socially and politically vocal society in Georgia. Organization has gained a reputation of being independent, from governmental subordination. It’s open for networking and partnership with organizations and humans who strive for democratic development of Georgia. Organization facilitates a dialogue between people through different countries, fields and professions. BBSA- Georgia is an actor working in the field of media and human rights, media and health literacy.
Baltic to Black Sea Alliance – Georgia is a daughter company of Baltic to Black Sea Alliance (BBSA), an International NGO Alliance for Regional Security and Democracy. The Alliance was founded on October 31, 2008 in Riga as a reaction to Georgia-Russia war.
The “Let’s Smile” program is built on the principles of positive psychology and is aimed at achieving psychological well-being in the education system. The first project of this program was conducted in 23 schools in 2021-2022, which included teaching social-emotional skills to 7th grade students.
The project was implemented in cooperation with Czech colleagues and included two aspects:
a) trainings for teachers in socio-emotional skills and burnout prevention;
b) Teaching SEL/MHL to 7th grade 12-13 year old school students. Students and teachers of 23 schools participated in the project;
The project was completed in October 2022. The project produced learning materials (curriculum, questionnaires, teacher’s manual and student journals), which are available to everyone at the link – https://vsechpetpohromade.cz/
The current project is a continuation of the previous project, which will take place in universities and aims to help future teachers to strengthen their social skills and positive emotions. This will help teachers in the future to bring a positive charge to the teaching process, which will make the school environment healthier and more attractive.