We started the project by taking a closer look at how social anxiety manifests itself among groups of adolescents and young adults in the reality around us. To this, we conducted research and interviews with 32 young people struggling with social phobia living in 5 countries. Young people talked about their experiences with social anxiety, the impact of the pandemic on their lives, and how social phobia is generally perceived in society. We really wanted to get to know their point of view so that we can choose appropriate creative forms of work.

The methods we used to work with people suffering from social anxiety, such as storrytelling, sung stories, theater of the oppressed, and drama, are methods already used by partner organizations.

Before implementing them, we practiced these methods on ourselves. We experienced their influence by participating in joint workshops and learning from each other. Only armed with theoretical knowledge and experience could we invite other young people from our countries to try out this innovative methodology combining creativity and socioemotional learning.

Each of the partner organizations invited a group of teenagers or young adults to cooperate and together they engaged in a process lasting from a dozen to several dozen hours of workshops. We called them pilot workshops because, based on the feedback from the participants, we could determine the functionality and impact of the proposed activities.

We wanted our experience to be useful to other facilitators and trainers. That's why we chose the exercises that worked best in our opinion, described and filmed them so that other interested people could discover and learn about how to use them.

Finally, we wanted to respond to the needs of our interviewees. Those interviewed clearly stated that social phobia is still not talked about enough, even though it is a disorder that affects many (not only) young people. In response to these inputs, we have created the "Creativecoopingchallenge Tik Tok channel" where we share different content related to this subject where young people are the protagonists and our main audience. There you can find useful information on places and serveces to look for support, some simple yet useful tips and information on social anxiety disorder (SAD) and mental health as well as testimonies, stories and actions taken by young people with SAD to better cope with it.