Ahead of the Day of the Seafarers, on 25 June, IMO will focus on seafarer’s wellbeing, particularly their mental health. This year’s campaign will have two hashtags: #SupportSeafarersWellbeing and #GoodDayatSea. With this campaign, the IMO wants to demonstrate how much seafarers matter.
By addressing seafarers’ wellbeing and especially mental health, this campaign informs about specific strategies to tackle stress and other issues affecting seafarers’ mental conditions, and make the tools available more widely known.
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The campaign will seek to highlight and showcase best practices and good examples but will also bring out areas of concern and examples of shortcomings.
As in previous years, the campaign will be centred on social media. All IMO’s social media platforms are likely to feature but Twitter and Facebook will account for most activity, with two hashtags:
#SupportSeafarersWellbeing
This hashtag can be used by shipping companies and others within the industry, to show how they provide a decent working environment for seafarers and how they address mental health issues among their seagoing staff.
#GoodDayatSea
This hashtag can be used to engage the general public, to wish them a good day at sea.We will use the hashtag #GoodDayatSea to encourage seafarers to share photos of themselves in a positive work environment.
IMO will also make an online survey to collect seafarers’ feedback on knowing their rights and if they feel those rights are being implemented into their operational reality.
Moreover,this year, IMO will promote good initiatives and material developed by maritime stakeholders to ensure higher standards of welfare as well as highlight what they are doing to improve conditions for seafarers regarding issues related to seafarers’ wellbeing, such as:
- Shore leave
- Abandonment
- Mental health
- Wages
- No criminalization
- Repatriation
- Resources available to Positive Mental Health
- MLC convention
