"NEW DECAMERON". The book

The book "New Decameron" aims to give voice to the European youth through their stories, both individual and collective written, showing their reflections and the way they have experienced the pandemic.

On the one hand, the individual stories are personal reflections on how young people experienced the pandemic caused by Covid-19. In these stories, you may feel identified or find different points of view on what you experienced and we hope they will help you, as they helped those who wrote them, to consolidate the positive aspects of what happened.

While on the other hand, we find collaboratively written stories. These include stories that deal with different topics such as nature, society, mental health and death. All are narrated differently, some more realistic and others more imaginative, but they all share the same goal: to help us reflect on what has happened and how it can positively affect our lives.

But, wait a minute... "You said that some stories were written in collaboration? How is that possible?" you may ask. Let us then explain the method used by our writers.
Before starting to write the stories, the writers, divided into groups, carried out various activities that allowed them to develop their creativity and, at the same time, reach an agreement on what they would write. Once the key points had been defined, starting with the same incipit, which defines the beginning of the stories, each of the writers wrote a paragraph and once finished, passed it on to a colleague who would start writing the second paragraph of the same story, and so on until the conclusion of the story by the last member of the group.
In this way, several stories can be found in the book consisting of different paragraphs written by different people, starting from the same incipit, concerning the above-mentioned themes: nature, society, mental health and death.

It is also important to mention that all the funds raised from the sale of the book will then be donated to an organisation that focuses on youth mental health, as we feel it is important that this book, in addition to helping its readers, can indirectly help other young people who are going through a difficult time.

**With all this in mind, our objectives in publishing this book are as follows:

• To highlight the importance of mental health in our society;
• To give young Europeans a voice, understanding what the pandemic and its consequences have meant for the youth community;
• To help the readers of the book reflect on the pandemic and to consolidate the positive aspects of such a difficult time;
• Encouraging more young people to use writing as a method to release their emotions;
• Highlighting the importance of the work of youth mental health organisations by donating the proceeds from book sales to one of them**

The idea is to replicate the setting created by the Tuscan writer Giovanni Boccaccio in the years 1349-1353 in his most famous book, the 'Decameron'. The author imagined that a group of ten young people who had fled the city during the pestilence spent ten days locked together on a farm in the hills near Florence, devising and writing various tales. The Covid-19 pandemic created a situation in many ways similar to that experienced in the 14th century in Europe. Therefore, the main idea of our project was to bring together young people from different European countries in a village called Belorado (Burgos, Spain), to reflect on the pandemic and the way it has shaped our lives, and to write different stories reflecting on how the pandemic has changed our perceptions and society.
For us, it is important to publish these stories to give them a voice, so that they can help others, as well as they were helping us. The book can help to reflect positively on what has happened, to reflect on the effect the pandemic has had on the people and, at the same time, to highlight the importance of mental health in our society.

The team that produced this book and its stories consist of young people from different European countries, supported in the exchange and dialogue process by 4 non-profit organisations working in the field of youth and non-formal education:
• Asociación Brújula Intercultural from Spain
• Associazione Kora from Italy
• Dreaming OPEnly from Germany
• Travelnest Egyesület from Hungary