Empower Minds Initiative

La Empower Minds Initiative (EMI) addresses mental health stigma through a culturally adapted AI-driven chatbot and mobile application, offering 24/7 psychoeducation and emotional support in Wolof, French, and Arabic. The intervention combines digital innovation with indigenous healing strategies, including storytelling and the principles of Ubuntu, and is tailored for bandwidth-limited environments.

Youth will be engaged throughout the design of the application via co-creation workshops, focus groups, and iterative testing phases. Their lived experiences, language preferences, and cultural references will directly shape the chatbot’s conversation flows, emotional tone, and content. This ensures that the platform reflects the realities of young people in Senegal and resonates with their everyday mental health needs. Moreover, the accessible platform will promote early intervention, helping to identify mental health issues before they escalate by offering immediate support and tailored resources. It will also promote mental health literacy by providing culturally relevant educational content that increases awareness and empowers youth to manage their mental health, as well as support their peers. The chatbot will be tested for its effectiveness in improving emotional resilience and literacy, assessing its cultural acceptability in diverse settings, and evaluating the feasibility of digital delivery in low-connectivity contexts.