Mind the Future
May 1, 2025 – April 30, 2028
Empowering Ukraine’s youth with innovative mental health solutions
Mind the Future is a 3-year innovative programme aiming at intervening in and contributing to systemic change in Ukraine’s mental health services sector, through enhancing the effectiveness and reach of local mental health services for vulnerable youth in Ukraine affected by the ongoing war. The target groups of the programme are vulnerable and marginalised youth (12 to 26 years old), local mental health services’ providers, educators and community members.
Goals
The goal of the programme is to contribute to reconstruction in Ukraine and the sustainable recovery of its economy and society, by promoting the resilience of Ukrainian youth and by empowering them to become active in the socioeconomic reconstruction of their country.
Activities
The programmes’ activities are:
- Brokering for the programme-approaches’ integration in existing mental health service delivery systems and for facilitating public-private partnerships for the scaling of the approaches’ implementation in Ukraine
- Provision of VR-based Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) to youth; the VR-based MHPSS methodology developed and used in NL is adapted to the Ukrainian context and deployed based on training to local VR coaches
- Mobile MHPSS Units are (re) introduced in Ukraine. These units provide preventive and corrective MHPSS to vulnerable youth located in hard to reach areas
- Community workshops conducted in Kyiv, Vinnitsa, and Odessa focused on building knowledge and skills of community members related to mental health awareness, stigma reduction, and self-help strategies
- Capacity building to local MHPSS providers and educators through training on trauma-informed MHPSS for youth, delivery, focusing on approaches on considerations for expanding decentralised MHPSS in underserved areas
- Knowledge exchange visits of Ukrainian MHPSS providers to the Netherlands and Poland to share best practices and expand cross-border mental health services
Expected results
- 6300 vulnerable/marginalised youth in Ukraine receiving VR-based MHPSS
- 6000 vulnerable/marganilised youth in Ukraine receiving Mobile Units MHPSS
- 120 local MHPSS providers trained on trauma-informed MHPSS
- 350 local community members participating in community workshops
Partners
ICDI – lead partner
Donors
The Ukraine Partnership Facility (UPF) funds this project. UPF is a programme from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency commissioned by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. UPF supports damage repair and reconstruction projects for the public and private sectors. UPF aims to help the recovery and sustainable reconstruction activities of the Ukrainian economy and society in the water, healthcare, circular reconstruction, sustainable energy and agricultural sectors.
Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO)
