<< Background >>The decision to apply for the project has come after many years of our experience with preparing students for their Erasmus+ exchange and also as a response to the current pandemic situation which has influenced all areas of the student life including study stays abroad. We have realized the pressing need to pay attention to students’ mental health since this field has been long overlooked despite its enormous impact on the motivation of students to participate in the Erasmus+ program, the positivity of their stay and also their integration back to their home environment after their return. Staying abroad can be mentally very demanding. For most of the students, it is the first time they’re leaving their friends, family and their comfort zone. During their mobility, they come to contact with new culture, new activities and a new need to communicate in a foreign language. Preparing for these kinds of situations comes with a lot of stress which the students experience before their departure. During the study stay itself, they can experience loneliness, exclusion, or the state of culture shock. After their return they may feel reverse culture shock. Nonetheless, current preparations for the mobility seem to be oriented mainly towards administration or multiculturality while ignoring these important aspects of studying abroad that the students need to be ready for. As the students are not offered sufficient preparation and support before their departure, many of them become discouraged and decide not to go. This applies especially to those students who suffer from mental problems or insufficient support from their close environment. They may be also dissuaded from participation based on the negative experiences of the past outgoing students who already returned from their mobility and who had had various problems or unpleasant feelings during their stay abroad. The consequence of this tendency is the consistently decreasing number of outgoing students. During the stay itself, students lack sufficient support from their home university. They often come across unforeseen problems and risks which they have to deal with on their own and in a foreign language. Many students do not expect having to deal with these issues just as they do not expect possible negative feelings connected to loneliness, being removed from the familiar environment or culture shock. This can manifest itself as some unpleasant feelings first but it can escalate to serious situations leading to anxiety, depression or even hospitalization. The unfortunate outcome of this is a negative experience from the mobility which they could not enjoy and get the most out of for their student, professional and personal life. We would like to address these issues with our project. Particularly, we see the need to increase inclusivity of the Erasmus+ program so that it is available to all students regardless their mental or physical health. In addition, we would like to motivate students to go study abroad and increase the number of students participating in the Erasmus+ program. Last but not least, we would like to ensure the most positive experience from their mobility and a smooth return back home.<< Objectives >>The main priority of our project is to increase inclusivity of the Erasmus+ program. Thanks to the preparatory pre-departure educational program, we will introduce outgoing students to the existence of possible problems and risks that can occur during their mobility and teach them how to deal with them. Consequent support provided using the online counselling service and the availability of all study materials from the educational program on the project’s webpage will ensure increased students’ sense of security. By using these project outputs, we want to reduce their fears and concerns that are frequently the main barrier hindering them from studying abroad. In particular, we would like to increase the motivation of those students who deal with various mental problems and who lack sufficient support that would help them go study abroad. The Mental Health program introduced in our project will provide this necessary support and make sure that the students’ mobility is as positive and as beneficial as possible. By providing the preparatory educational program before the departure, the support during the mobility and after the return, we wish to motivate students to participate in the Erasmus+ program and reassure them that the university will do its best to make their mobility enjoyable and profitable. The number of outgoing students is consistently decreasing and we would like to achieve a turn in this trend. We feel it is of the utmost importance to continually make sure that the mobility experience is complex and positive. The online counselling service and the materials available online will further ensure ongoing support during the students’ exchange and guarantee that their experience will be as positive and as enriching as possible. We would like for the students to return from their stay abroad satisfied and with many valuable experiences for their student, professional and personal development. Thanks to the techniques, which they will learn in the educational program, they will be ready to deal with various possible risks. If the opposite is the case, they will be able to reach out for help from the university using the counselling service. Involving the students who have returned from their mobility into the community of mentors for the next generation of outgoing students will reduce the possibility of reverse culture shock and facilitate their return to the home environment. Apart from this, we would like to create multinational community of students who will be help each other and share information. Last but not least, we wish to use the project to raise awareness about the need to work with mental health and discuss possible psychological problems of outgoing students. We would also like to remove the stigma still associated with this topic. By sharing the project’s results, want to create a unified way of how to care for outgoing students at European universities.<< Implementation >>The primary activity of our project will be the creation of the educational program for outgoing students. The program will focus mainly on mental health of the outgoing students and aim to prepare them for potential risks and problems that may occur during their mobility. Thanks to this training, the students will be prepared to deal with such issues efficiently. Topics covered in the program’s workshops and educational materials will include stress management, pre-departure fears, mindfulness, culture shock, and how to recognize and fight depression or anxiety. The program will include a series of workshops, videos, and webinars that will prepare students for their mobility. In addition, there will be other supportive materials such as articles, tips and tricks from other students, student blogs etc. By participating in the program, students will learn how to avoid certain high-risk situations during their mobility and how to deal with them if they happen. Another activity implemented by the project will be providing constant support to outgoing students using an online counselling service and online materials from the educational program that will be available on the project’s website. The goal of this support will be to help students in problematic situations and ensure their feeling of safety during the mobility. The counselling service will be provided by trained university employees (teachers or members of the university’s international department) and student volunteers, who have participated in the Erasmus+ program and may thus provide useful advice to those students that are currently experiencing their mobility. Thanks to this constant support, students will know there is a supportive community behind them that can help them at the time of need and will do their best to ensure a most positive and effective mobility experience for them. Both of these activities will lead to a creation of the project’s website with the timeline of the educational program, online counselling service and other supportive materials available to all outgoing students in case of a crisis during their mobility. In addition to these outputs we will create a handbook for the universities’ international department employees with the description of the whole Mental health program (that is the educational program, website and online counselling service) so that they can easily learn to work with these tools. The handbook will include a manual how to implement the program using the preparatory activities for the outgoing students at their respective universities. There will also be a manual how to administer the project’s webpage so that the employees might update the posted information based on the current development of risks associated with the mobilities of their students. The last important activity will be an ongoing collection of feedback and data from the students participating in the program. Based on their feedback and the analysis of data we will constantly modify subsequent phases of the implementation of the educational program and the online materials available to the students on the project’s webpage.<< Results >>The educational program provided to outgoing students before their departure for mobility will be the main result of the project. The program will be led by the professionals from the partner organization OUSHI, which is an institute under the St Cyril and Methodius Faculty of Theology of the Palacký University Olomouc . These specialists in the area of mental health and psychology will not only design the program but also implement it at other interested European universities. The program will consist of a series of workshops that will be first held by the professionals from OUSHI. In the next phase of the project, this task and associated knowledge will be transferred to the employees of the international departments of individual universities who will become new workshopers for the outgoing students. This will ensure the sustainability of the program even after the project is finished and also the possibility to apply it at any European university. Workshops held in person will be targeted at the first group of outgoing students and will be mainly part of the project’s testing phase. Based on the feedback of these participants we will create online webinars and videos that will be available to all outgoing students from the project’s webpage. Apart from the videos and webinars that are part of the educational program, the webpage will also contain information about the destination, contact information of other outgoing students and, most importantly, online counselling service. This counselling will be provided by trained employees of the universities’ international departments and also students who have participated in the Erasmus+ Program and thus can give advice to their fellow outgoing students in need. The online counselling service is one of the central results of the Mental Health program and will be created under the responsibility of Vilnius Tech. The two previous project results are closely associated with the following, which is the program’s webpage. It is yet another important output of the project because its goal is to connect the educational progam and online counselling service while making the Mental Health program attractive and user-friendly via gamification features. Academia Maribor, which has great experience with marketing and digitalization, wil be in charge of this output. The project’s webpage will include the timeline of the educational program, all educational materials and the online counselling service for outgoing students. The last project result is the program’s handbook for the employees of the universities’ international departments. It will be a booklet containing information about all the above-mentioned outputs together with the information on how to employ them at any European university. The goal of the handbook is to serve as a manual for the international departments’ employees when and where to implement the educational program, how to approach the online counselling service, how to train employees and students so that they are able to provide advice and support to outgoing students in need and how to use the materials which will be freely availabe on the project’s webpage.