From youth engagement to collective action — a recommendation for the NAPSWI Guwahati Declaration 2026
Vidya Lead Academy Team
A healthy campus is more than a place of academic learning. It is an environment where young people develop life skills, build supportive relationships and access help without stigma.
The promising practice “Prevention is Social: Youth Engagement for Healthy Campuses,” implemented by Nada India Foundation and recognised in Movendi International’s Exhibition of Promising Practices Report 2026, places youth participation, peer support and prevention at the centre of campus wellbeing.
As social work professionals gather in Guwahati for the 14th Indian Social Work Conference, this experience offers an opportunity to advance a shared vision: moving from responding to problems towards building healthier, more supportive and resilient campus communities.
Recommendation for the NAPSWI Guwahati Declaration 2026
We recommend that the Declaration recognise Healthy Campuses as a priority for prevention, student wellbeing and professional social work practice. Higher education institutions should adopt a whole-campus approach integrating life-skills education, youth-led peer support, tobacco and substance-use prevention, emotional wellbeing, accessible counselling and referral services, and meaningful student participation.
Social work professionals should play a defined role in translating this commitment into practice by:
Assessing campus needs: Identify social and environmental risk factors, existing support systems and barriers to student wellbeing through participatory assessments.
Building student capacity: Train and supervise peer supporters and student health advocates, with clear ethical boundaries and referral protocols.
Strengthening early intervention: Help faculty and student leaders recognise distress, respond without stigma and connect students with qualified services.
Engaging families and communities: Build appropriate partnerships with families, community organisations and health services while respecting student consent, confidentiality and safety.
Connecting practice with policy: Support campus wellbeing plans, prevention policies and coordination with relevant government programmes and civil society initiatives.
Monitoring and learning: Evaluate student participation, access to support, help-seeking and campus wellbeing while safeguarding privacy.
The Declaration should encourage higher education institutions to involve qualified social work professionals in campus wellbeing planning and implementation, supported by interprofessional collaboration, appropriate training and institutional resources.
The proposed commitment is clear: move from isolated awareness activities to sustained, evidence-informed campus practice—where prevention is shared, support is accessible and every student is treated with dignity.
Learning from a promising practice: Prevention is Social
Prevention programmes often focus on warning young people about risks. While information is essential, it is not enough. Students also need supportive relationships, opportunities to participate and confidence that they can ask for help without being judged.
The Healthy Campus approach offers three important lessons.
1. Young people can influence their peer environments
A student volunteer's account, “Breaking the Cycle: Helping Friends Quit Weed,” published on the Young India Network for Good Health blog, describes an effort to support friends who were using cannabis. The account highlights the role of honest conversations, healthier activities such as hiking and sports, and encouragement to seek professional help.
The lesson is not that peer support can replace treatment. Rather, a caring friend can become an important bridge to help. Student volunteers should be equipped to listen, recognise concerns and refer peers to appropriate services—not diagnose or manage complex substance-use problems themselves.
2. Connect self, health and policy
The Young India Wellness campaign links youth advocacy to three dimensions: self, health and policy.
Self-advocacy: Help students understand their needs, build confidence and speak up about concerns affecting their wellbeing.
Health advocacy: Train student volunteers to become health ambassadors who can support peer education and campus initiatives.
Policy advocacy: Create opportunities for young people to engage in informed discussions on tobacco control, substance-use prevention and healthier educational environments.
The campaign's approach—Identify → Train → Empower → Engage → Activism—provides a practical sequence for developing youth leadership and turning participation into action.
3. Make wellbeing part of campus culture
The Go Green and Healthy Campus campaign documented by the Young India Network brings together students, faculty and administrators around healthier lifestyles, health advocacy and sustainable campus environments.
This broader perspective recognises that wellbeing is shaped by both individual choices and the environments in which people live and learn. Healthy food, physical activity, emotional resilience, supportive relationships and prevention of tobacco, alcohol and other substance use should be part of an integrated campus vision.
A Drug-Free, Alcohol-Free and Tobacco-Free Environment (DATE) can provide a shared aspiration, but it must be supported by education, participation, appropriate policies and access to help. Prevention should never become a reason to shame or exclude students who need support.
Emotional connection: From conversation to support
The Healthy Campus framework promoted through Vidya Lead Academy places भावना | Emotional CPR within a wider approach to human connection and wellbeing.
Its three-part message is:
Connect: Listen without judgement and create a sense of belonging.
Empower: Build confidence, agency and the ability to make informed choices.
Revitalise: Encourage hope, supportive relationships and reconnection with others.
Faculty members and peer supporters can help students feel heard and guide them towards appropriate assistance. A practical support pathway is to connect, listen, guide, refer and follow up.
Confidentiality, consent, safeguarding and professional boundaries must remain central. The purpose is not to turn every student or faculty member into a counsellor, but to ensure that people know how to respond supportively and where to seek qualified help.
What social work brings to healthy campuses
Social work connects individual experiences with family relationships, peer groups, institutions, communities and public policy. This makes the profession particularly well placed to support a whole-campus approach.
Social work professionals can:
Conduct participatory campus assessments to understand needs, risks and protective factors.
Train and supervise peer supporters and student health advocates.
Strengthen life-skills education, prevention and non-stigmatising early intervention.
Facilitate access to counselling, health services and specialised substance-use care.
Engage families and community organisations appropriately, respecting student rights and confidentiality.
Support institutional wellbeing policies and coordination with government and civil society programmes.
Evaluate outcomes, document promising practices and share learning across institutions.
These roles require institutional recognition, appropriate training, professional supervision and collaboration with educators, health professionals and campus leadership.
Connecting campus practice with national priorities
India's National Action Plan for Drug Demand Reduction provides a policy context for prevention, awareness, capacity building, treatment, rehabilitation and social reintegration. Healthy Campus initiatives can help connect these priorities with the everyday environments where young people learn, form relationships and make decisions.
The NAPSWI conference theme, “From Welfare to Wellbeing: Reimagining Social Work Practice for Viksit Bharat @2047,” offers an opportunity to strengthen the contribution of social work to prevention and holistic wellbeing.
The proposed Declaration can encourage educational institutions, social work departments, government programmes, health services and civil society organisations to work together in adapting promising practices to local contexts. Progress should be measured not only by the number of events conducted, but also by whether students feel connected, know where to seek help and can access appropriate support.
Prevention is social and a shared responsibility
The Healthy Campus experience reinforces an important principle: prevention becomes more meaningful when young people participate in shaping the environments around them. A supportive conversation, a trained peer volunteer, an accessible counsellor or a campus policy that protects dignity can each contribute to a healthier environment.
No single intervention can address every challenge. Awareness, life skills, supportive relationships, professional services, institutional accountability and community participation must work together.
As social work professionals gather in Guwahati, we invite NAPSWI and its partners to make healthy campuses a visible priority in the Declaration and in future professional practice.
Let us move beyond asking young people merely to avoid risks. Let us work with them to build environments where healthy choices are supported, concerns can be expressed safely, help is accessible and every person is treated with dignity.
Prevention is social. Safety begins before a person becomes a patient—by ensuring they are first seen, accepted and respected as a person.
Healthy minds. Supportive campuses. Brighter futures.
for workshops Phone 01204941255 vidyaleadacademy@gmail.com
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