Our Approach
We support young people’s mental health and wellbeing by focusing on three key pillars:
LEARN: to understand the needs and drivers of young people’s mental health.
INVEST: to fund youth-led mental health innovation; and
MOBILIZE: to foster partnerships and create an ecosystem that allows for system-wide change to support youth wellbeing.
Young people are at the heart of our approach. They serve as program advisors, as key stakeholders in consultations, and youth-led organizations will be central to carrying out the work in each of the priority countries.
What We Fund
We invest in research, innovation, and ecosystem building focused on young people’s mental health and wellbeing in 12 priority countries: Colombia, Ecuador, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Morocco, Pakistan, Romania, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Vietnam.
How we invest
We believe those closest to the challenges can better identify needs and critical barriers and offer impactful and sustainable solutions. That’s why our investments in research, innovation, and ecosystem building are guided by locally-led landscape analyses and country consultations with youth, policymakers, local organizations, and mental health experts.
Beyond funding, our learning and support network (in partnership with Orygen) provides technical support to funded organizations and helps us share best practices, lessons, and our collective impact on global mental health.
Types of Funding
Research
We invest in locally-led country consultations to determine needs and priorities in each country.
In partnership with the Science for Africa Foundation, we also fund longitudinal research on how stressors like poverty, stigma, and climate change affect young people’s mental health, to inform better policies and practices.
Innovation
Guided by insights from our country consultations and focused on urban and peri-urban areas, we invest in youth-led innovation at Proof-of-Concept and Transition-to-Scale to address early drivers of youth mental health challenges. View all funded innovations!
Ecosystem Catalyst Grants
Our Ecosystem Catalyst Grants support the scale of youth-led innovations by removing barriers to mental health support and testing how these ideas can improve existing local and national systems (policies, resources, etc.). See all funded projects!
Ecosystem Building
To build a supportive ecosystem for youth mental health, we work to strengthen the systems that shape it — including policies, resources, relationships, and power dynamics — at both national and global levels.
In collaboration with our partners, United for Global Mental Health, we focus on increasing investment in youth mental health, amplifying youth and lived experience voices, and uniting funders, governments, and communities who share the same goals to drive lasting change.
