How did “The Healers” begin?
The journey of “The Healers” begins in an afternoon, when the brief of our final work was given to us in the laboratory of “Ad and PR Lab”. The project we were working on had as its theme the dissemination of useful content related to emotional intelligence and leadership skills, with the aim of informing, empowering and positively dealing with the difficult period of COVID19.
Our team did not waste time and the very next day we hosted a Skype call which led to a huge brainstorming session took place. We all started recording and analyzing how much our daily lives have changed, especially during the “Stay Home” period. After a long time passed, we discussed the thoughts we had recorded. Our common ground was more than we expected, and it revolved around how tired we were to hear the same news, how psychologically and physically we had suffered, and ended up on the fact that some of us found, while others are still looking for a hobby that would interest them, something to make them escape their difficult and boring routine of Covid-19. Some of the mentioned activities were painting, exercising and Tik-Tok.
All these similar answers led us, on the third day, to the idea of involving ourselves in the areas that concern us. We immediately named ourselves “The Healers”, while it was self-evident that our target group would be young people aged 18–25, whom we understand well and with whom we can identify. But how we would disseminate our content and from what communication channels was a question that bothered us for hours. So, we decided to create a website that is informative, consultative and entertaining in nature. Due to the fact that we chose this specific target group (young people, 18–25 years old) we considered social media as an ideal choice to make our website widely known. The Skype call of that day ended with the founding of the title of the website we called “Fight Coronatime”, inspired by the well-known new song of Tik-Tok: “It’s Coronatime”, and finally followed some good ideas for hashtags of our social media with a unanimous choice for the #fightcoronatime #cureforcorona #thehealers.
The fourth day came and, along with it, so did the now established Skype call of the team. We knew fully well that we might have found a good idea for our final project, but without getting a solid dose of feedback from our target group, we weren’t able to get started. But apart from the public who will have direct contact with the website, we could not leave out people in specific fields, such as psychologists and nurses, who would give us a deeper analysis of the situation we are going through and how young people see these critical days.
We then started writing questions to create a questionnaire that would appeal to young people and answer all our questions about the content of our website. However, since our website would also include consulting content, we thought of approaching psychologists with a request for an open interview. We decided to turn to five psychologists and focus on issues related to online therapy, the social relationships of young people with physical or online contact, the psychological state of young people today and the psychological imprint that the pandemic will have on young people in the long run. With the same reasoning, since our website will be informative, we found it useful to talk to first-line people who fight daily for all of us, the nurses. Therefore, we decided in Skype call what questions the interview with the three nurses would include, which would ultimately focus on the current situation in the hospitals that host patients suffering from COVID-19 today. The specific questionnaire was forwarded online and answered by one hundred people, aged 18–25. The interviews were also taken electronically in writing, and the interviewees were given four days to answer the questions.
When we reached the eighth day, during which another Skype call was made, we all presented the results we had received both from the questionnaires and from the interviews of health and mental health professionals. It was our turn to define the individual tasks that each of us would undertake, in order to arrive at the useful conclusions that would emerge from our research. Some members of the group undertook the analysis of the questionnaire and others the process of the data we had extracted from the interviews.
We didn’t want to waste any more valuable time, so on the tenth day we made new Skype call. In this important call we discussed the conclusions that had emerged from the contacts we had made. The main ones were the new habits that young people had acquired during the pandemic, the state of their interpersonal relationships, the negative emotions they experienced during the pandemic and their interest in online information through an updated entertainment and counseling website. Indicatively, our professional psychologists said that those who will be most affected by the lock-down may be young people, as the process of getting to know themselves and others is violently interrupted. They also argued that young people are likely to be overwhelmed by feelings of fear, insecurity, uncertainty, boredom or depression. Nurses, on the other hand, stressed the need for further public awareness of COVID19 prevention measures to raise awareness of the issue.
After many hours of discussion, we came to the conclusion that our findings really confirm the need of the young audience for an updated entertainment and counseling website. In such an emotionally charged atmosphere, young people need a website that will work comfortably and help them forget the current situation, with feedback that will entertain them, suggest interesting activities and advise them on how to manage this difficult living situation. Undoubtedly, further changes and corrections may be needed in the course of our plans, but it seems that we are well on our way to implementing our promising website. We keep our eyes and ears open for even more informative insights that will take off our overall effort to empower tomorrow’s leaders.
It took a week of hard work to create a well-designed website and to figure out exactly what we’re going to add to the category of information, tips and entertainment. We achieved the first part and here we have the link of the complete website of “Healers”: https://fightcoronatime.wixsite.com/healers. However, moving on to the second part, which is filling our website with content, we still have a long future in front of us, as our material goes up gradually and carefully. Until now, when entering the website, we can find in the information and counseling section the main questions of the interviews from the nurses and the psychologists. We thought of filling the entertainment part with influencing-videos, which we have created individually for the members of the group, in a project of “Ad and PR Lab” this year “PR_Branded_Native The Power of Storytelling Lab”. These videos are about various aspects of entertainment that interest young people, according to the results of our research, and we thought it was a great idea to join our last two workshops.
Until the final presentation of our project you can see the material that we upload through the website of “Healers”, but you can also follow our social media for more news. Below you can find the links of the social media accounts:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pg/The-Healers-101428341592818/posts/?ref=page_internal
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_the_healers_/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thehealers9
Have fun!
Paschalis Nastos, Lamprini Harmantzi, Danai kiritsi, Eugenia Kolovou, Giorgos Zervos, Dimitra Iordanoglou, Betty Tsakarestou
