Cuddlenation

As we live in an increasingly technology-focused, socially disconnected world, we're touching each other much less than before.
What some psychologists term "skin hunger" (also known as touch hunger) is a need for physical human contact. Satisfying your skin hunger requires you to have meaningful physical contact with another person, and failing to observe your need for human touch can have profound emotional [less happiness, more loneliness, more likely to experience depression and stress, lower relationship satisfaction, mood and anxiety disorders, inability to express and interpret emotion, difficulty to create secure attachments with others], even physical [worse health and more immune disorders], consequences.
When people lack love and touch in their lives this can also result in bodily self harm, such as in eating disorders or self-mutilation, as well as unhealthy sexual behavior - engaging in casual, unprotected sex with multiple, often unknown partners under the influence of alcohol or drugs, just to sate their skin hunger.

Also, from what we have observed in our own communities, it seems that young people are either afraid to initiate physical contact because of the fear of refusal or - on the contrary - use inappropriate touch because of their desire for attention, and lacking the understanding of simple boundaries of personal space of themselves and others.

Seeing the need to address this topic within our communities, we wish to realize the project Cuddlenation with the goal to develop the competences of the participants to give and receive physical touch with ease, love and respect.

The set objectives of Cuddlenation are:
- to create a safe space for the participants to explore consensual, respectful and loving touch and its different forms,
- to raise self-awareness of the participants' personal space and limits, and define healthy boundaries regarding physical touch,
- to improve self-confidence of the participants and their ability to respect their boundaries and say ''no'' when necessary, as well as initiate respectful physical contact with others,
- for the participants to learn to connect to others in a deeply meaningful way, fostering a sense of belonging to a community,
- to create easy-to-use guidelines for us to use in our activities involving physical contact and share them as a dissemination result with our partners,
- to implement a minimum of 5 follow-up activities [one per country] addressing the topics of Cuddlenation.

As we learn to give and receive respectful, loving and consensual physical touch to and from those around us, our mental, emotional and physical health and well-being increases. We become much happier and fulfilled in our lives, less aggressive, trust each other more, become more productive and capable, our mental abilities increase, we cooperate better, and become better learners. By learning to respect our own personal space and boundaries, we learn to respect others more, and become more empathetic, which leads to greater social inclusion.

The planned activities of the project include all kinds of different body movement forms, processes with the goal to connect with each other on a deeply personal level, as well as going outdoors for reconnecting to self and to nature, which gives us a greater understanding of our own needs and desires.