Young Impact Day 2025
Young Impact Day 2025: focus on digital mindfulness
On Friday, November 7, Impact Gstaad brought together pupils from the Saanenland region for Young Impact Day 2025. Around 70 young people from the John F. Kennedy International School and Gsteig School explored the connection between technology, mental health and sustainability under the focus topic “Mindful use of digitalization”.
From small Gstaad to the big world
Under the motto “From small Gstaad to the big world”, Impact Gstaad organized this cross-institutional educational initiative to tackle one of the most pressing challenges facing today’s youth: navigating the digital landscape with awareness, resilience and responsibility.
“The topic of digital mindfulness is directly linked to social sustainability,” explains Chantal Reichenbach, project manager of the Young Impact Day. “The aim was not only to teach media skills, but also to enable young people to critically question digital tools and use them to tackle social and environmental challenges.”
Four workshops - one common mission
In four interactive workshops, the young people explored key aspects of digital life: Vanessa Geiss and Petra Marty from Netpathie gave an introduction to how artificial intelligence works and showed how to recognize deepfakes and how manipulated videos can be exposed. Psychologist Sina Saluz taught resilience strategies for online and offline challenges. Dr. Michelle Wright and Dr. Mecky McNeil from HealthFirst discussed digital balance, mental health and conscious social media consumption with the young people under the motto “Follow feeds that nourish you”.
Impact Gstaad was supported by education partner EduLab in the organization and implementation. The association supported the entire development process with in-depth expertise and its innovative, co-creative approach to sustainable education.
Holistic approach
The Young Impact Day deliberately focused on interdisciplinary skills that are essential for the future: critical thinking, resilience, collaboration and self-awareness. “It was particularly nice to see how intensively young people from the different schools exchanged ideas and discussed them together,” remarks Reichenbach. “It is precisely this cross-institutional networking that makes the Young Impact Day unique.”
The idea behind Young Impact
The Young Impact Day is the annual educational initiative of Impact Gstaad, which has been promoting exchange between private and public schools in the Saanenland and sensitizing young people to sustainability issues since 2023. The event runs through various sustainability dimensions each year and prepares young people to become active shapers of their future.