“The ANAPNEO Project : A Journey of Good Health and Well-being”
Take a look into how, thanks to our “Social issues, social innovation and corporate responsibility class”, we created the Anapneo project, trying new things out and examining how and if this project could work in real life.
Our circle of sessions for “Dare to Challenge” project was all about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set by the United Nations in 2015. Let us mention a few important facts about the SDGs, in order to get to know them better. They are seventeen global goals set by the UN, which defend global development and human well-being, and aim to deal with the most crucial issues nowadays, as recognized by the world’s governments. The UN aspires that these goals will be achieved by 2030, that is why the SDGs are also called “the 2030 agenda”.
The very special thing about the SDGs is the fact that global threats and challenges today seem to work as business opportunities. That is exactly the way these goals work for governments and organizations. They provide a “map” for each business to set up a strategy based on an innovative idea that aims to combat a global problem.
From the moment of their establishment, the SDGs have been broadly accepted, as a lot of organizations around the world have been working according to them. This was a complex process. In the first United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (1992), also known as the Earth Summit, there was formed Agenda 21. This Agenda formalized the nine society’s sectors which would serve as the main channels for the UN sustainable development activities. These channels are called Major Groups and other Stakeholders (MGoS) have adopted the 2030 agenda and are actively working towards its implementation through projects, initiatives, advocacy, knowledge-sharing and monitoring. MGoS often work in collaboration with other sectors, such as the governments themselves. They also participate in the annual follow-up and review process of the 2030 agenda.
In addition, the UN is highlighting the great importance of partnership in order to achieve such a massive endeavor as global sustainable development. This is why the SDG 17 recognizes multi-stakeholder partnerships as the means for sharing knowledge, expertise, technologies and financial resources in order to support the sustainable development project in all countries, especially the developing ones.
The milestones during this journey were the following: “Partnerships for SD” (2003), “Future We Want (Para 283, Registry of Commitments)” (2012), “SIDS Accelerated Modalities of Action (SAMOA) Pathway” (2014), “Establishment of SIDS Partnership Framework” and the “2030 Agenda: SDG 17” (2015), and of course “SAMOA PATHWAY High-Level Midterm Review” (2019).
It is also worth mentioning some key partnerships and action networks. For the partnerships: “Sustainable Water and Energy Solutions”, “Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation (GPEDC)”, “Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data”, “Global Partnership on Marine Litter (GPML)”, “Sea Turtle Restoration and Protection”, and “Human Rights Habitat Observatory”. For the action networks: “The Ocean Conference”, “Small Island Developing States”, “SDG 7 Partnership Exchange” and “Decent Jobs for Youth”.
In the context of our sessions, we had to take a closer look to each one of the SDGs and select one to work on. We read the vision of every goal and we finally decided to pick the SDG 3: Global Health and Well-Being, which aims to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all ages, all around the world.
The goal consists of 4 fields, and different global data and metrics have been collected for each field over the past few years. The fields are the following: “reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health” (303.000 women around the world died due to pregnancy and childbirth complications in 2015), “infectious diseases” (the rate of global HIV incidence among adults decreased by 22% between 2010 and 2017, however drug-resistant tuberculosis remains a leading cause of illness and death), “non-communicable diseases, mental health and environmental risks” (cardiovascular diseases, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes still hold a high risk of death globally, however there was progress in reducing the global suicide rate in 2016), and “health systems and funding” (official development assistance for basic health from all donors increased by 61% since 2010 and reached $10.7 billion in 2017). Learn more on : https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/health/
In short, the SDG 3 focuses on improving the health of millions of people, and this includes increasing life expectancy, reducing maternal and child mortality, addressing major communicable and non-communicable diseases, achieving universal health coverage and sustainable financing for health, and also dealing with other related factors, such as air pollution and inadequate water — sanitation.
We chose this topic because it is extremely crucial for our world and we believe that with the right initiatives and collaborations between organizations, NGOs, governments etc., there will definitely be a plausible solution universally.
OUR DARE TO CHALLENGE- SDG PROJECT JOURNEY
As a team we decided to do a research in order to identify the problems and at the same time the challenges that our country faces in the domain of mental and sexual health. Unfortunately, the results were more than disappointing, indicating that in Greece there’s a terrifying lack of support towards mentally ill people. It goes without saying that we were alarmed by the results and we had to think of something innovative and useful so as to help this community in Greece.
Tackling a problem like this one means not just a healthier society but a more effective one. By creating our NGO “Anapneo” we want to make at least a certain category of young people, open up, express freely and educate themselves on mental health issues. We aim at a strong social impact that will eliminate the stigma around mentally ill people and create a friendly environment for young people who seek help and immediate support. Our whole idea is based on the fact that healthy societies are built by healthy citizens. So, it’s important to know that support to mentally ill people is not an advantage just for them, but for the whole society.
After conducting another research for other local organisations with similar goals we clarified our innovative parts of our NGO. Firstly, our services are free of charge as we collaborate with specialists (psychologists, therapists) who provide volunteering support to our users. Secondly, we focus not just on healing but on making people feel comfortable with themselves and their issues too. Last but not least, we teach our users how to open up, share and collaborate with a close community to them. We also educate our users on how to avoid the existing stigma which may be harmful for their healing process.
In order to ensure that our idea is realistic and effective we followed strictly the Design Thinking Methodology. First step was to identify the lack of similar initiatives in our country. Secondly, we did a strong brainstorming on what mentally people need most, by gathering inspiration at the same time. Then, we reached some breakthrough ideas, very important for our NGO’s goals. Before reaching the very last part, we built our proto — personas ( rough prototypes ) and at the end we tried our idea by passing from theory to practice.
ANAPNEO started as an idea of a future NGO that focused on ending the mental health stigma. So, we created questionnaires and started working in a serious manner. Nevertheless, we soon realized that such an idea was difficult to work with since our proto-personas/users were difficult to be found. So, taking into consideration the feedback that we got from our previous lessons, we organized a meeting, narrowed down our options and shared our ideas. We decided to stay within the spectrum of “mental health” and we chose a theme which is close to our heart : anxiety. As a result, ANAPNEΟ, a prototype of an NGO, now focuses on enabling young people to deal with anxiety and maintain a balanced life while attending university, through its services. At that time, we also used the OpenIdeo Experience Map in order to get to know our users better. We conducted interviews and spoke with real people. We then used the paper sheet provided by OpenIdeo and wrote down our users’ personal information, their needs and then, what they could gain through our services . Here’s an example of one of our users :
So, the proto-personas/users/target group of ANAPNEO, are university students of ages 18 to 25 who are dealing with anxiety and its consequences such as panic attacks, eating or sleep disorders. We used Dorothy (20) and Vasiliki (21) as our proto-personas, in order to then search, how their needs and problems can be solved through what ANAPNEO stands for and provides to its users.
ANAPNEO offers free-of-charge services for its members.
So what are the services of our NGO, now ?
- Support Group/ Free Coffee Session with psychologist in a friendly environment
- Advice from our psychologist and teacher. Collaboration with allaboutparents.gr — advice on how parents can help in reducing their child’s anxiety levels.
- Art workshop with a psychologist and a teacher
- The “Safe Spot Guide”
The Support Group was created after taking into consideration the advice that we took from Dr.Maria Apostolopoulou, Psychologist — Relational Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist, and our User Experience Map. We analyzed the problems that each one of our users had, and we also took into consideration the fact that each of them liked the idea of hearing similar stories from people close to their age. As a result, we organized coffee sessions with our psychologist in a friendly environment where the users can talk about their problems. Then, through the act of “sharing”, the psychologist will provide them support. Through this action, our users will seek professional help easily and will not feel isolated from their peers.
After our first coffee session, Vasiliki (21) mentioned to us, that she was glad to hear people her age, speaking openly about their anxiety. She also agreed that members of our family or people that we socialize with, can sometimes play a detrimental part in fueling our anxiety levels. Taking that into account, we decided to collaborate with “allaboutparents.gr”, a website where Dr.Apostolopoulou and other psychologists, write articles about good parenting. This means that we also want, for our next step, to connect with parents of university students and let them know that there are ways they can help their anxious children.
Daphne (20) , one of the founders of ANAPNEO, shared with us that playing music, brings her anxiety levels down and transforms her bad thoughts into something creative. Dr. Apostolopoulou agreed with her and since all of the founders and users of ANAPNEO love art, we decided that it would be wise to organize monthly art workshops in which each user, according to his/her problem, will create something artistic. That way, they will focus on something creative and maybe find out about a secret talent that they didn’t know they possessed.
Taking into consideration our users’ needs and difficulties, we created the “Safe Spot Guide”. According to our users stories, anxiety levels get high, at times where there is no way of visiting a specialist (for example, before sleep time or while riding the bus to work). Taking this into consideration, we created a solution called the “Safe Spot Guide” which is now in a form of a forum that our users can use wherever they are. It contains advice from Dr.Apostolopoulou on what to do in certain situations. All in all, the whole idea of ANAPNEO resonates with its users needs and problems. We try taking into account whatever we gain from our members, creating services according to their challenges in life and then provide solutions.
Here is what we have transformed into reality so far :
Two weeks ago, we decided to test things out. We arranged our very first session with our psychologist and one of ANAPNEO’s users, Vasiliki (21). The session run for 1 and a half hours and it was a total success. Vasiliki shared her problems (in a few words, losing her sleep routine due to anxiety that is produced by the amount of homework she has to finish and her being a perfectionist and doing things always on time) with Ms.Apostolopoulou, who provided her with advice and cheered her up. The founders of the ANAPNEO project where also tuning in the session and shared their own experiences. Here is what Vasiliki said after the session :
“ It felt good to talk to people who have similar experiences and problems. […] I also think it is very important that they were close to my age. […] I liked the fact that it (the meeting) was held in a friendly environment since I have difficulties talking in front of lots of people.”
This is basically our impact story. After the meeting, we learned that Vasiliki felt better about sharing her thoughts with people her age and that her problems were less of a burden. We are of course very glad about this impact that our work had and we decided, after listening to Ms.Apostolopoulou’s advice and having in mind how our first session went, to focus on providing support by creating a support group. In a few words, groups of 4 to 5 people will talk with our psychologist and share their thoughts and problems. We realized that it is a good idea, since Vasiliki liked being around people her age. Our initial idea was to create sessions with the psychologist but we re-evaluated our thoughts and decided to start working on this initiative. Ms.Apostolopoulou said that “these support groups should have specific rules. The most vital of these rules, is to keep whatever is said in these meetings, private. This information is confidential.” . She also agreed on the possibility of us collaborating with “allaboutparents.gr”, a website where she and other psychologists, write articles regarding parenting.
Another thing we have tested is the “Safe Guide Spot”. Basically, we wanted to ask our users how they feel about having an on-the-spot solution, wherever they are. Dorothy (20) said : “I agree with such an idea (especially in the form of a small book which is our next step with the “Safe Guide Spot” ). I really like your initiative. “ Anastasia (20), another one of our users, agreed as well. So now, we are working hard in order to transform the “Safe Guide Spot”, into a small book.
The articles that we posted on our website were also a great success since they were easy to read and not too long.
Something we haven’t tested yet, is what the impact of the art workshops would be. In these workshops, experts could show how our feelings of anxiety can be transformed into something creative. What’s for sure is that Ms.Apostolopoulou told us after our meeting, that art always helps with bringing down anxiety levels. We also haven’t tested the funding part. After our discussion with Ms. Apostolopoulou we decided to ask for funding from our own University or from the Ministry of Health. We’re working on this part.
As for our next steps, we want to search possible ways as to where would be best to work on our project. We thought that a company like “SPACES”( https://www.spacesworks.com/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMItZuy2cit5wIVA-WaCh3DVQcJEAAYASAAEgLFHPD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds ) for example would be a good choice. For instance, Spaces provides new businesses with office space and services such as technology equipment, food and beverage services etc. We think it is an innovative idea and a nice work environment.
All in all, testing our services in real life and getting positive feedback from our users, was a gratifying experience.
OUR WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Among all the social devices existing nowadays, we chose to create a website and a Facebook Page for our project. Both are called like our NGO, ANAPNEO. Our engagement approach is mainly focused on three parts : involvement, participation and self-expressive.
· Why we created a website: https://anapneongo.wixsite.com/anapneo
First of all, we wanted to reach people all over the world, not only in Greece where our NGO is based. Indeed, the topic we chose, anxiety, can touch every student, which is our target group. Moreover, most of them could have access to our platform as they use internet daily. Another thing important to us was our digital presence. Nowadays, it’s very difficult to exist as an NGO or even as a company if we don’t use digital tools. Our website is also like an open window to our services, in order to raise awareness on our social innovation. It also allows people to talk openly and anonymously to a professional for free or to others with the same kind of experiences. Usually, teenagers and young people can’t ask their parents about it because of the stigma on mental health issue and they can’t afford therapy because it’s really expensive. Furthermore, a website is a good way to present our services and provide psychologist advices but also to engage our users with the creation of a forum where everyone can express their feelings, ask questions and seek help.
· Why we created a Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/ANAPNEO
Our Facebook Page is useful for every announcement we must make about the weekly sessions and the different workshops with the psychologist. It’s way easier for us and for the psychologist to know how many people will be involved in the sessions and workshops and. Also, we are sharing our articles published on the ANAPNEO website with our followers, on several topics around mental health. Indeed, it can help them between sessions if they joined but also if they can’t come, they have resources on the topic, at least. It’s also a great way for them to share their experience on our different posts and talk with others. The psychologist makes a summary of every sessions and workshops each week. It allows us to have feedback from our users on our sessions and workshops so we can adjust our work to answer to their needs. This is increasing people’s trust towards our NGO and encourages them to join our weekly sessions.
LAST THOUGHTS/ IMPACT
Our main goal throughout our project, was to provide a safe spot to open up about mental health issues and especially about anxiety in a sustainable way. In fact, the topic should be everyone’s concern and it also affects directly the members of our team. Indeed, it was special to us to think of ways, even hypothetically, that would help other students and provide them with solutions. It was a great opportunity for us to choose a social issue we were passionate about and to work on it, to evaluate, to change and make many other steps to achieve our goal. Mental health is often not taken seriously and comes with a huge stigma, especially here, in Greece. As citizens but also as students it was not easy at first to prototype something realistic in terms of responses to our personas’ needs by ourselves. This is why we changed at the end and focused on anxiety instead of ending the stigma. Indeed, with a sustainable development goal, we discovered the reality of the real world and the difficult part of prototyping something effective and realistic in a few months. It had an impact on us because like our persona, we are affected by anxiety in our daily life. Having the opportunity to do something about it, in Greece, really changed our state of mind. We realised that, on our scale, we could do something that gives people, a real-life solution.
P.S : We want to thank Betty Tsakarestou for giving us the chance to work on this project, Ms. Apostolopoulou and Lina Zimianiti for their interest and immense help. Lastly we want to thank our friends who believed in us and participated in our project.
Writter by our Team :
Camille Deboissy, Maria- Eleni Kapota, Ioannis Kogias and Daphne Zacharia
Οur Power Points :
