From Self-Doubt to Pride: Understanding the Empowering Effects of Delivering School-Based Wellness Programmes for Emerging Adult Facilitators-A Qualitative Study.

Ample literature exists on the impact of prevention programmes on their target audience, while much less is known about how delivering such programmes influences their facilitators. Even less literature exists on the emotional and social processes that form this potential impact on facilitators. The current study analysed qualitative in-depth, non-structured interviews, as well as written essays provided by 33 student-facilitators who delivered the "Favoring Myself" programme in Israel during 2019-2021. This school-based wellness programme comprised 10 weekly, 90 min sessions on self-care behaviours, media literacy, self-esteem, and positive body image, which are well-known protective factors against risky behaviours. A thematic analysis was applied to explore the main themes in the collected data. An interesting affective transformation from self-doubt to pride in themselves emerged as a shared experience of these young facilitators. Facilitators related their ability to facilitate the programme, as well as to undergo an individual maturation and empowerment experience, to certain components of the programme itself, such as the preparatory course, individual supervision, and the peer-group experience. This shift from doubt to pride is discussed using two frameworks-a theoretical discourse of emerging adulthood as a developmental stage, and the self-determination theory.

Non-Cooperation within a School-Based Wellness Program during the COVID-19 Pandemic-A Qualitative Research.

This paper presents a qualitative analysis of COVID-19's impact on the development, delivery, and uptake of "Favoring Myself", a school-based interactive wellness program conducted via Zoom during 2020-2021. "Favoring Myself" targets resilience, self-esteem, body-esteem, self-care behaviors, and media literacy among 5th-grade preadolescents. Data were obtained from meetings, 23 semi-structured interviews with parents, teachers, and principals, and other modes of correspondence. All data were transcribed and thematically analyzed. The analysis highlighted the barriers faced when delivering external programs during COVID-19. Parents' difficulties in cooperating with the program, distrustful relationships between parents and the education system, as well as teachers' overload and stress, were identified as barriers to the external program's sustainability. These challenges are discussed in light of previous studies of school-based programs, the psychological and social contexts of an ongoing crisis and the impact of neoliberalism on education. This study concludes that school-based prevention programs and accompanying research should be more flexible and focus on understanding and relating to parents' and schools' fears, uncertainties, and resistance. It is the hope of the authors that knowledge created through this exploration will be helpful in future coping vis-à-vis prevention program teams and recipients in times of unpredictable, unmanageable, and overpowering crises.