We have reached the final week of the EMBRACE Public Awareness Campaign (PAC) and are celebrating the successful conclusion of this shared emotional learning experience.
Launched on World Mental Health Day in October 2025, #KnowEmotions / #DescoperăEmoțiile has spent the last several months showing that when young people are given the tools to name their feelings, they gain more power to understand themselves, communicate their needs, and navigate the world around them.
Throughout the campaign, we explored the wide spectrum of human emotion through the Wheel of Emotions. For the final chapter, we turn to Love – the bond of care, joy, trust, and connection that reminds us why emotional awareness matters.
World Mental Health Day served as the perfect catalyst for our mission. By launching on this global day of action, EMBRACE aimed to shift the conversation from a “silent struggle” to a shared, visible dialogue, ensuring that mental health support is recognized as a fundamental right for every young person.
From our high-energy start at the Children’s Forum to this final milestone, the campaign has been about building a common language for the heart.
The Heart of the Finale: Why Love?
Together with the EMBRACE psychologist team, we identified Love as the final emotion of the #KnowEmotions journey because of its deep connection to care, attachment, belonging, and human connection. From this perspective, love supports life and development: a parent’s love for a child, expressed through attachment and care, helps protect and nurture new life. At the same time, love helps us connect with others, build relationships, and feel that we belong.
This project-based understanding is also strongly supported by emotion research. In Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become, Professor of Psychology Barbara Fredrickson describes love as “our supreme emotion” and argues that love may be more consequential to human welfare than any other emotion because it helps connect people into the social fabric of community. Her theory of “positivity resonance” frames love as a shared emotional experience built through positive feeling, mutual care, and connection.
Love also connects meaningfully to Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions. In Plutchik’s model, emotions are organized around eight core emotions: Joy, Trust, Fear, Surprise, Sadness, Disgust, Anger, and Anticipation. More complex emotions can emerge when these core emotions combine; in this framework, Love can be understood as the combination of Joy and Trust.
Watch the Grand Finale here:
In this final video, the EMBRACE Squad reminds us that love can be a fountain of joy, care, and connection – flowing through the things we cherish and helping us grow together.
EN: https://youtu.be/zh6lCo9-IWo
RO: https://youtu.be/CULsYwimhak
From Children’s Voices to a Living Resource
The campaign did not just happen for children – it happened with them. The “Hero Video” PSA premiered at the Children’s Forum, setting the tone for a campaign rooted in young people’s real-life challenges, stories, and creativity.
Today, the EMBRACE PAC page can be found as the central space for the #KnowEmotions journey, bringing together:
- The PAC Full Animated Library: 28 short-form storytelling videos, 14 in each language, featuring the EMBRACE characters and introducing each emotion in a child-friendly way.
- Parent and Guardian Tips: Practical guidance to help adults support children in recognizing, discussing, and managing emotions.
- Quizzes and Reflection Activities: Interactive resources that help children reinforce what they learned and apply emotional literacy in everyday situations.
- The Over 30-Week Timeline Archive: A chronological overview of the campaign’s exploration of the Wheel of Emotions, showing how each feeling was introduced, supported, and reinforced before concluding with Love.
Together, these resources remind us that mental health challenges are real – and that seeking help is a sign of strength. They also ensure that the PAC remains available beyond the campaign timeline as a living resource for continued emotional learning, reflection, and dialogue.
Empowerment, Agency, and the Future
The PAC was designed to create agency and understanding. Through animated videos, classroom printables, quote cards, worksheets, posters, parent and guardian tips, and quizzes, EMBRACE moved mental health awareness from the screen into everyday learning environments.
Most importantly, the campaign helped reinforce a simple but powerful message: emotions matter. Learning to recognize, express, and manage them is not only part of growing up – it is an essential part of caring for our mental health.
The journey doesn’t end here, because understanding your emotions is a skill for life.
Funding Agency: EACEA – European Education and Culture Executive Agency
Learn more about EMBRACE: embrace-future.eu
