New Come on! digital tool encourages physical activity in youth work
The method bank includes tips for active exercises, ideation, and planning. It helps to address effective ways how young people’s everyday physical activity can be increased through small, practical actions.
The Come on! digital tool has been developed together with youth workers and other professionals in the field. All the methods included are inspired by youth workers’ own experiences.
“The method tips have been compiled by bringing together practices that youth workers have found effective in increasing everyday physical activity among young people. The methods have been carefully selected to fit into everyday youth work. One of the key criteria was that the methods must be easy to implement without special sports facilities or specific physical activity expertise,” says Miia Lehtimäki, Project Manager of the Physical Activity as a Driver of Youth Work project.
The list of tips includes a wide range of activities, from calmer options to more active ones, but not sports. The methods emphasize doing things together without pressure on performance.
“The underlying idea of the methods is that physical activity should generate joy, experiences of success, and pleasant shared moments. Each method page includes a description of how the method supports a young person’s mental well-being. This may relate, for example, to relaxation, sense of community, strengthening competence, or supporting daily rhythms,” Lehtimäki explains.
The Come on! digital tool is available at mieli.fi/en/come-on. It can be saved to a mobile phone as an app-like shortcut, allowing quick access to ideas directly from your phone. The tool is also available in the materials bank on the mieli.fi website.
Come on! offers:
- quick and easy-to-implement ideas for immediate use
- ways to add physical activity to situations where young people are met
- methods for engaging young people, and
- approaches for developing a more physically active operating environment and culture in the longer term.
The tool works alongside the An Active Youth – A Healthy Mind online course. The course provides a theoretical foundation on the effects of physical activity on young people’s mental well-being, which can then be put into practice using the Come on! tool. Completing the online course takes about one hour and can be done either individually or together with colleagues.
Links
An Active Youth – A Healthy Mind: Online Course for Youth Work
The materials have been developed as part of the Youth Work as a Promoter of Physical Activity project (2024–2025), with support from the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture’s Finland on the Move programme.
Contact us
Miia Lehtimäki
Project Manager, Movement in Youth Work
+358 40 626 4628
firstname.lastname@mieli.fi