Mindfulness intervention for self awareness in youth through serious games

<< Background >>Research shows that mindfulness can be considered a mediator for self awareness, emotional regulation, and stress reduction, which are all extremely valuable for teenagers and young adults that are transitioning into a fast-paced, often overactive society.Self awareness has been shown to increase acceptance and proactivity and positively affect performance,with reflection and mindfulness encouraging persistence with tasks despite performance-related stress.Many young people, especially those coming from refugee and immigrant communities don't have access to mindfulness tools, which can prove valuable for the development of self awareness, understanding and regulation of emotions, sound decision making, healthy relationship and communication skills and dealing with uncertainty in life. Currently in Europe, neither mindfulness nor self awareness are being taught to youth in a systematic way, even though in the past years many schools are starting to adopt mindfulness programmes.MindLand addressed these needs by providing an accessible, engaging, interactive, digital intervention that teaches young people mindfulness practices in order to empower them with self awareness and essential life skills.<< Objectives >>MindLand's aim was to create a digital intervention focused on self awareness, that would provide mindfulness training to youth through curated material, interactive exercises and prompts to help youth investigate their inner lives. MindLand would offer a set of tools that would be readily available to its users, like educational videos and meditation exercises that can help youth when dealing with uncertainty and fears due to unforeseen circumstances, or simply due to the stresses of everyday life. MindLand would offer a guided experience for youth to deal with difficult emotions, become more mindful of the beliefs that influence them, and build self esteem to help them take more initiative and learn to choose what influences them when dealing with fears and uncertainty.An important objective for MindLand was for the intervention to be inclusive and accessible to youth from any socioeconomic background. This was done by aiming for digital transformation of a mindfulness course, and by using localisation and translating the content to languages that would be useful for youth facing various crises today in the world.<< Implementation >>As part of the MindLand project, the following activities were implemented:1. Design and development of curriculum on mindfulness training and self awareness, driven by the collection of user requirements from youth and especially marginalised youth like refugees.2. Development and integration of serious games and activities.3. Localisation and translation of the intervention's content in Arabic and Ukrainian.4. MindLand Launch and user based Evaluation.<< Results >>The main output of the project is the MindLand intervention, in the form of a digital application. It is available both as a free android application that can be downloaded through the Google Play Store (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.DefaultCompany.MindLand), and as a web application available on MindLand's website (https://mind-land.eu/game.html) without the need to download. Therefore MindLand is accessible from any device that can be connected to the internet.The intervention is available in English, Arabic and Ukrainian, and offers a guided interactive course to youth to help them deal with fear and uncertainty in various areas of their lives. It includes mindfulness meditations, educational videos, text content, voiceovers, personalisation, a virtual journal to take notes and a fun character that guides the user through the process, providing an aesthetically pleasing and calming digital environment.All the content available in the MindLand application was created, produced and translated during the project's lifetime.