Stress Management: Myth or Reality
“Stress should be a powerful driving force, not an obstacle.”
―Bill Phillips
Within Asian countries, talking about mental health and stress is mostly frowned upon and considered taboo. These issues are not considered to be of great importance, as most of the Asian countries are Third World countries. Consisting of a higher percentage of poor populations whose basic needs are not being met.
With time, the dynamics are changing and the need to highlight these issues is of great importance, as today’s youth are the most affected members of society. With this fast-paced life there is a race of being better than the other, peer pressure, fear of financial stability and keeping up with these trends are some of the major causes of stress and depression among youth today.
According to a study by Unihealth around 80% of students suffer from anxiety & stress in higher education. In Pakistan, recently many suicidal cases of students have come to rise which is quite alarming. Universities in Pakistan do not have any counselors on-premises or any training workshops for students. There is a need to conduct training for the students, which is essential for them before making big life decisions.
To tackle this issue we took an initiative to create Stress Saviors Society, serving first year and second year university students. We conducted 3 sessions based stress management workshop, utilizing social media marketing to spread the word and get registrations.
Our first workshop was conducted on 23rd May, and received amazing feedback. Each of these marked as a successful milestone for us. The next two workshops were conducted on 29th and 30th. We have successfully conducted our workshop before the deadline we decided upon before operationalizing our plan.
Some of the challenges we faced were:
- Arranging for platform for the workshop, so we can conduct a 2hr session.
- Low registration rate
- Keeping Participants engaged before the sessions
We sought help from one of our collaborator to arrange for the platform. As we were not having enough registrations according to our expectations, we decided to open registrations free of cost for those people who want to attend the workshops but do not want to have a certificate. Since our last blog we changed our approach in this way to get more and more participants without even paying fee if they do not want to get a certificate. To keep our participants engaged we created a WhatsApp group and shared video clips, feedback forms with them.
We were a group of 9 members and each group member were assigned tasks according to their capabilities and skills. There were four major sections to be handled to successfully execute the project. These are:
1.Marketing (Musa, Farhan)
2. Content Writing (Aisha, Bareera)
3. IT (Shanza, Khizar, Farhan)
4. Data Compilation / Google Forms (John, Lareb, Huddah)
5. Scouting Collaborators / Scouting Sponsors (All members)
6. Workshop Outline and participation of members in workshops (All members)
For us, success was to impact the life of even a single student. Each member of the society is of great importance. We were able to bring in 50 participants, which is a huge success in it. Positive feedback and full attendance provide a perfect picture of the success of our training session.
For the sustainability of our project we will be launching a Volunteers registration drive in the near future. The recruited team of Volunteers will help us manage this project. We are also working on different proposals, as our previous project focused on the betterment of university students. We are now looking forward to focusing on other age groups.
