Mind the Future; 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. 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. 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. The programmes’ activities are:• Provision of Virtual Reality (VR)-based Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) to 6300 youth;• Mobile MHPSS Units are (re)introduced in Ukraine to provide decentralised MHPSS to 6000 youth;• Community workshops conducted in Kyiv, Vinnytsia, and Odesa focused on building knowledge and skills of 350 community members related to mental health awareness, stigma reduction, and self-help strategies;• Capacity building to 120 local MHPSS providers and educators, focusing on approaches for expanding decentralised MHPSS in underserved areas;• Knowledge exchange visits of Ukrainian MHPSS providers to the Netherlands and Poland; and • Brokering for the programme-approaches’ integration in existing mental health service delivery systems.