At the first Board meeting of the ESN Strasbourg local board 2019/2020 mandate, a new issue has emerged: the mental well-being of the our international students. Everyone always hears about a Erasmus as a magical experience, where everything is a marvelous, the party is in full swing every night and all we do is to have fun (and work from time to time). But in reality, Mobility can be stressful, stressful, disorienting, etc. Not always easy to make friends, to go out alone, to be far away from his family, to live in a country in which we don't know the language, the administration... So with the Board of Directors, we thought that making cultural events was good but not necessarily suitable for everyone. So we began to think about ways to be there for our most isolated international students, to try to be a support to them psychologically or to be a sympathetic ear, to act as intermediaries between them and the people in a position to help them mentally and emotionally.
Team Helpy has been put in place during the second lockdown that took place in France (from end of October). We are aware that the current sanitary situation can heavily affect student’s wellbeing and mental health and can even lead to severe consequences (depression, suicide, etc.). In order to help reduce the impact, we created this team to help find solutions to overcome the current difficulties. Once a week, a small team of volunteers is available online for any local or Erasmus student facing troubles. The aim is to help them solve administrative issues and be there for them to have a nice chat in case they feel lonely or depressed because of the situation. We are there to listen to them but also to play online games together in order to spend a nice time and try to forget a bit our daily troubles and worries. In case we realize that the situation has a serious mental health consequence on the student, we can put him in contact with a professional (for example a psychologist) to help him feel better. Team Helpy has been created at the end of October but still takes place at the moment every week.
During the first semester 2020/2021 - Every Wednesday (6pm-8pm)
During the second semester 2020/2021 - Every Monday (8pm-10pm)
Team Helpy helps students who may feel lonely or depressed because of the situation feel better. We believe it helps a lot to know that we are there if they need any help, mentally / administratively / physically. Even if such an even does not attract many students (thankfully) each time, for us such an initiative is very important during this time. We can even see the impact that we have on students and how much better they feel after talking to us during this event. We even received a praise by ESN France for our event during the valorization of associations for online events for the month of December which helps us know we are doing the right thing and going in the right direction. The strong side is that Team Helpy aims to make daily life during the COVID pandemic more enjoyable and helps escape from daily troubles for some time.
