The OUR Generation App is here!

We celebrated the launch of our brand new app as part of Mental Health Awareness Week 2023.

The event took place at Dromintee Primary School on Monday 15^th May, and was attended by David Babington, Chief Executive of lead partner Action Mental Health along with OUR Generation Project Manager Carol Scullion.

Dr Colette Ramsey and Dr Tara O’Neill of Ulster University gave a short introduction before pupils were given the chance to try out the app for themselves.

Pupils at Dromintee had originally taken part in research workshops that fed into the design and build of the app. In total, children and young people were involved in app co-design through  7 of these cross-border workshops, which gathered their views on the types of games they play and the types of characters they like.

The OUR Generation app was developed by Action Mental Health in collaboration with researchers at the Ulster University’s School of Psychology, along with Prof. Maurice Mulvenna of the AI Research Centre in the University’s School of Computing. The app developer is Fluxguide Ausstellungssysteme GmbH, based in Vienna, Austria.

The app aims to educate children & young people about mental health and wellbeing. It is designed as a digital learning tool, featuring 5 levels with activities relating to mental health and well-being, coping and problem-solving skills, perspective taking, empathy and intergroup contact & trust.

Speaking at the launch event, David Babington thanked Dromintee for taking part in OUR Generation and the app development workshops.

He said: “We’re delighted to be launching the OUR Generation app at Dromintee Primary school. It was important to us that children and young people were involved in the co-design of this app, and pupils from Dromintee were involved in our initial research workshops that helped us get a sense of what types of apps they like to play, and the kind of content they enjoy.”

He added: “We hope the OUR Generation app will be used as a digital learning tool by children, young people and their key contacts to help develop awareness around resilience, mental health and wellbeing.

“For many years, Action Mental Health has been working to give children and young people the skills they need to look after their mental health through traditional programmes, so I am delighted to see this support develop digitally also.”

The OUR Generation app is free and can be downloaded from the Google Play Store and the Apple Store.

For more information click here.