YouMind (Youth Individual Sports Mindset) is a small-scale partnership project that aims to raise awareness about the importance of mental health in sport and to develop different strategies to prevent mental health issues for young athletes.

The ideas developed jointly with all of the partners will be presented in a form of promotional video and guidelines sharing the best practices with athletes and sport organizations. The project will last two years and will consist of various activities, such as workshops, surveys and meetings.

The overall goals of this project are to:
- Raise awareness about the importance of mental health in sport and about mental disorders of
young athletes and their negative impact on sport performances and private life.
- To give the opportunity to young athletes to speak up and voice their stories while enabling
them to build connections with others in a safe space.
- Increase self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-empowerment.
- Encourage tolerance, understanding and proactive reaction from coaches

To reach these goals, an international cooperation of organisations with relevant experiences, knowledge and scaling impact will be required. This project is dedicated to youth and so are all the partners. This set of partners will enable us to gather different points of view about mental health in sport specifically targeted for young athletes. Addressing mental health issues of sports athletes is an initiative that all project partners can benefit from and implement as a core value at their scale.

On January 22, 2024 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, the kick off meeting of the YouMind (Youth Individual Sports Mindset) project was hosted by EUSA, gathering all of the project partners to discuss the next steps that will be undertaken to realize the project's objectives. 

During the meeting all the partners agreed on next steps that will be enforced to meet the expectations of the project establishments. Meeting attendees covered the project's background, overarching objectives, structure, timelines, and delved into specific tasks such as communication, management, research, project milestones and final evaluation.

The partners met again during online meetings and in Hungary in July during the European Universities Games 2024.

The project entered its second year of development in 2025, and on January 8th the four partner organisations gathered for an online seminar on mental health and for a meeting to discuss the next steps. During the meeting analysis of the survey about mental health of young athletes was shared to contribute to raise awareness among the youth.

There was a rapid follow-up online meeting held in February where discussions centered on key action points, including the realisation and structure of upcoming workshops, the creation of a project video, and details surrounding individual workshops planned in each partner country.

During spring, impactful workshops were held, with one workshop taking place in every participating country to address the vital connection between mental health and sport. Among them, EUSA took a leading role by organising a powerful and engaging session in Ljubljana on April 9, in collaboration with the youth center Zavod Bob.

On Friday, May 23rd, the coastal town of Koper (Slovenia) hosted the third edition of the Festival on Mental Health, organised by the Slovenian National Institute for Public Health (NIJZ), where EUSA and the YouMind project was represented highlighting the objectives and vision of the project.

On June 5th, during the European Youth Sport Platform (EYSP) in Munich, the final in-person meeting of the YouMind Project marked a significant milestone in the project’s lifecycle. Apart from the plenary session in Munich, also parallel workshops on mental health were provided for the participants.

In the end of September, during the European Week of Sport, the YouMind project launched new resources on mental health. The initiative introduced guidelines on mental health in youth sports and a project video specifically designed to support young people in sport. The resources are freely available at the project website: YouMind resources.

The YouMind Project has shown that meaningful change can be achieved through cooperation, open dialogue, and dedicated spaces for learning and sharing. By providing young athletes with tools, support systems, and a voice, the project has helped break down stigma and pave the way for a healthier, more empathetic sports culture.

The YouMind project is co-funded by the European Union and is coordinated by the EUSA Institute in cooperation with the following partners: ENGSO Youth, University of Miskolc Sport Club (MEAFC), and University of Salerno Sports Center (CUS Salerno).