Background: Truancy is a serious problem that affects adolescents from all around the world: in the USA, it has been reported that up to 35% of high school students skipper one or more days of school during a school years.Moreover the research has shown that truancy is often linked to the presence of psychological distress and related risk behaviours as bullying, lack of control and substance abuse; other research show that severe and prolonged school refusal may be associated with mental health problems in adulthood.In WE-STAY project will be used, among others, awareness programs for truancy and risk behaviours prevention.The awareness programs are used for several years in programs to prevent risky behaviour in adolescents.Methods: WE-STAY is a truancy prevention programme aimed at adolescents of European schools, financed by Ⅶ European Framework and developed by a consortium of 10 countries (Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden,) with Sweden serving as the scientific coordinating centre.It involves recruitment of 9600 pupils, 1600 for six countries.Prevention programs included in WE-STAY are based on three different approaches (awareness training on mental health promotion for adolescents, screening for at-risk adolescents by health professionals, combination of awareness and screen interventions).The control group with minimal intervention will be also implemented.The awareness intervention will be dedicated to increasing consciousness about psychological factors associated to truancy trough workshops with teachers, informative letters to parents, meetings with parents at school, a phone helpline and awareness booklet.Role-play sessions in involved schools will be conducted with the aim of allowing to the students to explore and express their emotions in controlled conditions.Information about the possibility to seek help for psychological distress will be providing to students and parents.Awareness intervention will be performed on 400 pupils of the randomized schools.Discussion: At the present moment, in Europe, more truancy prevention programmes there are, but without an evaluation of their effectiveness.However, there are programs that currently are implemented in Europe and world that have obtained a positive evaluation of their effectiveness; these programs use several resources such as trained teachers, mental health services and counsellors, information and training for parents.