A key to mental wellbeing: Knowing yourself and your feelings
How UNICEF’s chatbot equips Ukrainian and Polish youth with knowledge, which helps them understand, express and manage their feelings
- English
- Polish
Watching Masha address a conference room full of people at UNICEF office in Warsaw, you wouldn’t tell she is nervous. The 16-year-old is poised, her voice steady and commanding attention — just as when she addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September when she went there as part of UNICEF Youth Advocates Mobilisation Lab. And yet, the teenager admits stress is a regular part of her life.
The bright-eyed teen from Severodonetsk in eastern Ukraine now lives in Krakow, southern Poland, where she had arrived in March 2022 after fleeing war in Ukraine. She’s among the hundreds of thousands of youth from Ukraine forced by circumstance to build a new life in Poland and understands all too well the pressures associated with such life-changing events.
That’s why this November she was eager to work with UNICEF in Poland, alongside two other teenagers from Ukraine and Poland — Daria and Mieszko — to improve U-Report Europe chatbot.
Connecting with youth
The messaging tool was first launched in Poland in June 2022 with the main goal of connecting young people from Ukraine seeking shelter in Poland and other host countries, with the information necessary to safely cross the border and to set up in their new home.
The chatbot — which in Poland to date has been used by some 4,000 teenagers — is free of charge, anonymous and can be accessed by scanning a QR code with one's mobile phone or by sending a message on U-Report messaging channels on Telegram, WhatsApp, Viber and Messenger.
In Poland, the chatbot also provided information helping Ukrainian youth and their families navigate local bureaucracy, like explaining the process and paperwork needed to obtain the personal identification number — a prerequisite for accessing the labour market and social services.
From the beginning, U-Report contains information in Ukrainian and English about safety, refugee rights and the humanitarian assistance people could access in the countries they wished to enter, including Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, Moldova, Romania and Slovakia.
To get a better understanding of the needs of Ukrainian youth, the U-Report team launched anonymous surveys.
“We want to understand what kind of support you need, if the advice provided is really useful to you,” explains Sofiya Tulkina, who is supporting coordination of U-Report Europe in Poland, during the consultation session with Masha, Daria and Mieszko.
The survey information is then shared with UNICEF’s social and behavioural change team, which can devise specific programs and interventions based on the answers.
Keeping up with the teens and the times
But as time went by and Ukrainian youth settled into new lives in Poland, their situation and needs have changed. “This was created in June of 2022, so some of the information was becoming less relevant. For example, people who have been in Poland for a year already knew how to make a doctor’s appointment,” says Sofiya.
To reflect these changes, UNICEF has updated the chatbot and today it includes important information about a number of issues, for example mental health, to help young people recognize their feelings and moods as well as to understand when to seek support. It also includes a vocational guide to Poland’s education system, which explains the differences between technical and regular high schools, so that Ukrainian teens can make informed decisions about their future.
It was the new mental health section, however, that has attracted the most attention from the three participants of the co-creation session.
“Mental health information is important for people who are growing up because adolescence can be difficult,” says 14-year-old Mieszko from Warsaw, who is attending a music school in the capital city while concurrently finishing his formal education online.
Because of the mental health crisis sweeping through Poland, the chatbot is now also available in Polish, and is geared towards both Ukrainian and Polish youth. It contains information meant to help its users understand their emotions, accept how they’re feeling, express their feelings in a healthy manner and recognise when they might need to ask for help.
The app users can learn that finding it hard to get out of bed or feeling tired all the time are signs that might warrant seeking assistance to manage difficult feelings. “For support, talk to a community leader or someone in your community who supports you,” the chatbot advises. Those who wish to speak to a trained professional can access contact numbers for relevant helplines.
While adolescents are increasingly grappling with mental health issues everywhere in the world, young people affected by armed conflict are especially vulnerable. In Poland, a recent study by UNICEF, Save the Children and Plan International revealed that children and adolescents from Ukraine miss the people, pets and places they left behind. Over half of the study’s Ukrainian participants also said that they would like to talk to “someone professional” about their mental health.
“Mental health is really important to Ukrainian teenagers in Poland because we have our own problems to cope with. It matters to me too,” says 17-year-old Daria, who is originally from Bila Tserkva in central Ukraine, during the U-Report consultation.
Daria arrived in Krakow in March 2022 with her older brother and is currently attending a technical school. The school she is studying at doesn’t employ an intercultural assistant who could help her ease into a new educational system. Separated from her family and thrown into a new environment, she has herself expressed interest in speaking to a mental health professional, but hasn’t gotten around to it yet. “Typically I’m coping with this on my own,” she says.
That’s why the information and advice in the U-Report is important, Masha chimes in. “For me, it [mental health] is about understanding oneself and about self-acceptance.”
