- Implementing Organization: The Carter Center
- Type: Ecosystem Catalyst Grant
- Location: Sierra Leone
Our Ecosystem Catalyst (EC) Grants help scale youth-led ideas, remove barriers to mental health prevention and promotion support, and test how youth-led innovation can work within and improve existing systems.
Ecosystem Building in Sierra Leone
Stakeholders consulted highlighted that while national legislation criminalizes harm-reduction activities and drug users for both possession and use, which can perpetuate stigma, the recent declaration of Kush as a national emergency presents an opportunity. This moment can be used to strengthen preventative approaches to youth mental health and wellbeing in policy to address the underlying factors of drug use like poverty, trauma, lack of economic opportunities, etc.
The Ecosystem Catalyst Project
The Carter Center will support advocacy efforts that influence national policies and regulatory frameworks on mental health and substance use towards effective prevention and promotion strategies and stigma reduction.
Through a coordinated approach, involving local mental health experts, youth, and people with lived experience, Sierra Leone’s substance use and mental health priorities will be mainstreamed as drivers for youth mental health and wellbeing. The Carter Center will leverage existing networks and collaborate with relevant partners, including the Ministry of Health and the Presidential Taskforce on Mental Health, to address systemic barriers hindering the development of new and revised policies and regulatory frameworks for substance use and mental health, while building local demand for innovations to reduce and prevent substance use among young people.
