Youth Camps – a Collarboration with Kompus
About the Project
Today many young people report mental health issues. A significant proportion of teenagers around the age of 15 experience school-related stress and low self-esteem, especially among girls. To understand how to promote increased well-being, in-depth knowledge is needed about the needs of young people and what types of interventions can meet these needs. Kompus provides one such intervention.
The organization Kompus has been conducting so-called educational camps for young people aged 15-20 since 1997. The purpose of these camps is to strengthen young people's skills in various ways. The goal is to equip them with tools that help them develop a more stable and secure self-image and increase their understanding of how to make good choices and take responsibility. Within the framework of this project, UPIC and Kompus will collaborate to describe and evaluate the camp activities.
Purpose
The purpose is to describe, evaluate, and learn from Kompus' intervention. We aim to find out:
- Which young people participate in these camps.
- What the camp content is and how the camps operate.
- How the participants rate their mental health, self-esteem, and other psychological protective- and risk factors. Do these ratings change over time?
- What do the young people themselves think about the camp? What lessons do they take with them?
The results provide important information about what support young people themselves seek. This can be used both to develop Kompus' camp activities and to identify new research initiatives for UPIC.
Read more about Kompus on their website here
Project participants: Emma Hovén, Karin Brocki, and from Kompus Helene Nordgren och Jan Backeman
Project financed by: VFS-stöd, Uppsala universitet.