Under the slogan “Discover your inner self. Speak up”, the European Youth Information Day on 17 April saw the municipal InfoJove service organise activities and resources to promote emotional welfare among the city’s young people.

In a year shaped by the pandemic, emotional welfare has ceased to be taboo and has become a recurrent topic of conversation among young people at a professional and personal level.

To mark European Youth Information Day and raise awareness on young people’s right to complete and reliable information, and also to recognise the work of professionals in this sphere, the City Council’s infoJOVE and “Aquí t’escoltem” services prepared a series of activities and informational materials to strengthen personal and social habits and foster personal growth among the city’s young people:

• A virtual activity with artistic expressions, with young people displaying their emotions through drawings, words, dance, videos and songs shared on Instagram with the hashtag #InfoJOVEemociona.
• An interactive game to help young people access various services through different questions. There are two types of game, one for the under-16s, focusing on academic resources, emotional welfare, volunteer work and involvement in associations, and one for the over-17s, on job services and resources, international mobility and housing.
• A video on the services offered by infoJOVE and in particular the “Aquí t’escoltem” service.
• An interactive animation on social media to show young people the services and support they will find at their local infoJOVE point.

Supporting young people during the pandemic

The city’s infoJove services have been working throughout the pandemic to offer online and face-to-face services for young people, providing them with the necessary tools to help them identify the different emotions they have experienced during the year, with the help of a team of professionals at all times.

InfoJove services handled 113,735 requests in 2020, providing specialised advice on almost 9,000 occasions, plus 11.5% more individual sessions compared to 2019. At the same time, the Service for Teenagers and Families handled 9,702 enquiries in 2020, of which over 2,100 were individual sessions for teenagers via the “Aqui t’escoltem” service, some 46% more than the previous year.