A capable mentor’s toolkit includes the basics of supporting the mental health of volunteers

Mental health increasingly talked about

Walid Sfeir from Belgium does not really like using the term mental health:

“The term still carries a bit of a stigma, at least in French. I prefer to talk about mental well-being,” Sfeir says. “But it is true that over the past few years, our volunteers have had more and more minor issues related to mental health.”

Sfeir is the head teacher of the communal home school Ecole démocratique de l' Orneau, which is maintained by a group of Belgian parents. He also occasionally serves as the mentor of the volunteers that the school receives from the European Solidarity Corps. 

Andrea Keresztesi, president of the Hungarian Sound-Picture Cultural Association (Hang-Kép Kulturális Egyesület), has been working with international volunteers for almost 20 years. She, too, has observed an increase in mental health challenges. However, as an experienced coordinator and mentor, she estimates that the change actually began several years ago. 

“Mental health is an increasingly discussed topic. One explanation for this might be that young people talk more openly about their mental health concerns nowadays. The same applies to volunteer support organisations... Perhaps mental health challenges were just as common before, but we were simply not as aware of them?” Keresztesi speculates.

Transparency enables preparation

Both Sfeir and Keresztesi stress that mental health challenges do not prevent participation in the international volunteer work of the European Solidarity Corps. According to them, the special needs of volunteers have been taken into account well in the programme's funding: 

“The programme is structured in a way that allows us to prepare for these challenges in advance – as long as we know what to prepare for,” Sfeir says.

In fact, Sfeir’s view is that problems arise specifically when a volunteer’s need for special support is not revealed at a sufficiently early stage. According to Sfeir, few young people have the courage to bring up their challenges during the recruitment process: 

“I do understand why. If we are picking two volunteers out of three hundred candidates, young people see it as a competition and will therefore not say anything that could potentially prevent them from being picked,” Sfeir laments.

Sfeir’s disappointment is compounded by the fact that the communal home school’s operating philosophy emphasises social justice and opposes all types of competition. 

“We have had a few volunteers whose depression symptoms came to light a bit too late, with the situation having already strained the relationships between volunteers,” Sfeir says.

Sfeir speculates that keeping difficult issues a secret may also stem in part from cultural differences. 

"We have preferred to pick volunteers from slightly more far-off countries, including outside of Europe.”

Then again, according to Sfeir, things like going to therapy are not exactly talked about in the same ways as the price of baguettes in Belgium either. 

Mentoring is about sensitivity and balancing

Andrea Keresztesi says that mentors should also look at their own operating methods and update them to meet changed needs. She admits to having made all kinds of mistakes over the years:

“We have made all kinds of assumptions, such as asking a volunteer whether their family is coming to visit Hungary or asking a male volunteer whether he has a girlfriend. If the volunteer is from a broken family or their family is financially disadvantaged, these kinds of questions may elicit difficult emotions. The same applies to assuming that someone is heterosexual.”

Keresztesi is of the opinion that mentors need to become more aware of societal changes, avoid normative talk and be sensitive to issues that are important to young people. 

“For example, nowadays I ask our new arrivals which pronouns they want to be referred by. If we are working on a group project, we may also discuss the matter together, making it a learning opportunity as well,” she says.

By pronouns, Keresztesi means the personal pronouns that indicate a person’s gender in English: she/her and he/him. According to current practice, a person may also be referred to as they/them when you do not want to define their gender on binary terms.

Keresztesi points out, however, that difficult situations and feelings of failure will arise no matter what you do. Sometimes information is just not passed on or something is overlooked. No one can be a superhero who solves every problem.

“Trying to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders is a recipe for burnout. You need to find a balance in terms of how much you can do. Young people need a stable person to rely on, but that person cannot do everything,” Keresztesi says. 

Volunteer Work Coordinator Sirpa Terho from the Finnish Blue Ribbon Foundation, who also participated in the mentor training, also agrees that mental health has become a constantly talked about topic. 

At the Blue Ribbon Foundation, the workload of mentors is balanced by having multiple people share the responsibility for mentoring volunteers. Terho is responsible for the monthly meetings of volunteers, which involve going over matters related to volunteer work, such as objectives, learning and motivation. 

“Our volunteers also have leisure time mentors, who are tasked with supporting our volunteers’ integration in Finland. They help volunteers with everyday practical issues, such as mobility, shopping and finding recreational activities. Our volunteers can also call them whenever they have questions or just need to talk to someone,” Terho explains.

Volunteer work gives and takes

Terho explains that at the Blue Ribbon Foundation, they have to give careful consideration to their volunteers’ coping during the recruitment process, as their volunteer work can be mentally taxing: 

“Our volunteers primarily work with homeless people, many of whom have mental health and substance abuse issues. Our other core target group is undocumented persons.”

According to Terho, those who are particularly interested in working with these groups are best equipped to handle the work. Because of this, motivation is a major focus in their candidate interviews. The fact that the volunteer work period lasts an entire year also requires long-term commitment. 

“We take in volunteers for a 12-month period because building trust with our customers takes time. Customers warm up to new faces slowly, gradually getting used to them, coming closer and starting to trust,” says Terho.

Volunteers are first introduced to the work through relaxed observation, accompanying employees and observing their work at different units. 

“We start things off quite slowly, but our volunteers have praised the fact that they get to learn about our work at a relaxed pace, as the work is challenging and unfamiliar to many volunteers,” Terho says.

Although it is challenging, working with vulnerable people can also offer experiences of success and a sense of meaning. 

For some, volunteering can even be the thing that keeps them going when life is otherwise difficult. 

Andrea Keresztesi brings up one young person for whom the start of the volunteer period with all the associated fun activities and group formation with the other volunteers was simply overwhelming: 

“The situation improved when the volunteer was able to start working at the bird hospital in the Hortobágy nature reserve. Nature and animals have healing powers,” she remarks.

Volunteers can have very different personalities and prefer different environments. According to Keresztesi, one of the things that she has learned over the years is that you cannot take anything as a given. Some people in volunteer groups may need more alone time and space or more personal attention, while others like nothing more than doing things together. 

Monthly meetings, a well-being circle and ‘families’

The organisations of all three mentors have found ways to support the well-being of volunteers in different situations. 

Sirpa Terho says that they monitor how their volunteers are feeling throughout the year.

“If a volunteer seems tired or stressed, we go over which tasks are causing them stress and which are not. For example, they can sometimes be assigned from customer work to something else, such as sorting donated clothing, office tasks or writing tasks. In the case of one volunteer, we even cut back on their working hours,” says Terho. 

The monthly meetings of volunteers are important for helping volunteers cope with their work. They involve going over things such as exceptional situations together.

“All kinds of situations can come up during work, and the customers can be impulsive. It is important to create a sense of safety. We also emphasise that a volunteer is not someone who bears responsibility,” says Terho.

Motivation is also a major focus throughout the volunteer period. 

“I always ask volunteers how motivated they are to work with our customer groups and working community. Our volunteers have been able to quite openly say when their motivation has wavered. If a volunteer’s motivation is low, we try to find something intrinsic to them, like an idea that they could start working on,” says Terho.

The Belgian home school community is managed through circles based on the equal participation of members, i.e. community meetings. Walid Sfeir reveals that alongside other circles, they have established a well-being circle in order to discuss issues related to the well-being of community members on a regular basis. The circle may also be convened as necessary, and it can play a listening or mediating role, for example. 

Meanwhile, Andrea Keresztesi’s association has implemented ‘families’ in group activities, which means that young people are divided into smaller groups tasked with taking care of their members. 

“The idea of the family system is to encourage young people to take the well-being of others into consideration and to talk about their own feelings. While the families do not always work, sometimes they end up working very well. Ideally, the families hang out together in their free time as well,” Keresztesi says, smiling.

Mentor pilot training praised

All three mentors seem genuinely satisfied with the mentor training focused on supporting the mental health of volunteers organised in Finland. 

Keresztesi and Terho want to share the materials and lessons learned with others as well. 

“During the training, I started thinking that it might be a good idea to deepen the induction of our leisure time mentors by going over these materials in a more concise manner and creating some kind of induction package,” Terho explains.

Keresztesi has similar plans. 

Sfeir says that he participated in the training in order to obtain new tools and broaden his professional perspective specifically in regard to supporting the well-being of volunteers. 

“My goals included finding the right way to talk to young people and effective arguments to convince them that issues related to mental well-being do not need to be concealed.”

Sfeir says that, when thinking back on times when the volunteers he has mentored have fallen out with one another, resulting in increasing tension, there must have been some small signals that he did not know to pay attention to. As such, it would be useful to learn how to more effectively observe and interpret small hints.

In the experienced teacher’s opinion, the different aspects of the training – theory, practice and peer learning – were excellently balanced. Although the training was a pilot, Sfeir struggles to come up with anything to improve about it:

“Perhaps the training could also highlight social and global themes that affect the mental health of young people. COVID certainly had an impact, and now war is weighing on many people’s minds. This is very noticeable when we have volunteers coming from different parts of Europe and even further away. We are not always able to consider all the cultural perspectives,” Sfeir says after giving the matter some thought.

Supporting Volunteer's Mental Health through Mentoring is part of Mental Health in Youth Work, a long-term project of the National Agencies of Erasmus+ Youth and the European Solidarity Corps. The lessons learned from the training pilot will serve as a basis for developing tools and materials for mentors to support the mental health of volunteers. Stay tuned!

Text: Hilma Ruokolainen