Karate for Mental Health

ended

The project Karate for Mental Health is going to be a project on the topic of social inclusion of marginalized youth in karate and para-karate activities, where 8 trainers from 3 organizations from Croatia and North Macedonia are going to develop innovative training methods, focused on mental training for disadvantaged youth, especially youth with disabilities. During the 13 months of the project, we will implement 5 international and several local activities, The international ones are going to gather young karate athletes and their trainers for an exchange of experiences, trying out new training methods, and various workshops on mental training. The activities for trainers are created to strengthen the capacities of three very successful organizations in karate, focused on mental training exercises and developing a deeper understanding of the importance of mental health care for young generations of athletes. One of the concrete deliverables of this project will be a report, that will be created based on initial and final cognitive and conative ability tests done by the 30 involved participants in this project. The tests will show these increased abilities after one year of training through innovative new methods where physical and mental training are combined in mixed karate groups consisting of children from the regular population and children with various disadvantages, such as different types of disabilities. Another result will be a set of three educational videos for trainers and youth workers in sports, where different exercises for mental training in karate are going to be presented by the involved trainers and athletes. These videos will be available in Croatian, Macedonian, and English and shared on relevant platforms, reaching out to the target groups and motivating other organizations to apply for projects themselves, contributing to the development of a tolerant, inclusive, as well as physically and mentally healthy society.