With the emerging mental health problems and high number of suicide among the youths in LMICs countries like Nepal where access to mental health services and awareness is near to zero we started to bring awareness and culture to having a safer spaces starting from schools where we can cater numbers of children to prevent from mental health issues and suicide and make sure no-one is left unheard.
It is a multidisciplinary and holistic approach of mental health in schools where schools have access to mental health facilities and is openly discussed like discussing about games. It is a activity based innovation where students freely enjoy and openly embrace mental health. The annual mental health camp and SEL classroom intervention integrating into the curriculum is yet another beauty of this innovation where we promote resilience and work collaboratively on areas like digital citizenship and comprehensive sexual and reproductive health. The school counselors are yet another part of this innovation we call the heart of this program where every students have access to share their feeling and emotions besides our counselor visits each and every classroom possible adding the value of functional behavior assessment to make sure the shy and isolated kids are not left besides. This innovation is a model embraced and adapted by more than 150 schools and their ecosystem.
Well more than 6 years of patience, hard-work, ups downs, innovation and teamwork spreading it to more than 150 schools including 15 progressive private schools of Nepal serving more than 20,000 children their parents. Promoting mental health at home to collaborating it with teaching and non teaching staffs and the whole school community is definitely spreading the words of mental health to every home where students feels safe to visit schools. Not only schools but also this program have supported tens of municipality in capacity building and empowerment program for health workers and volunteers and aided with free mental health camp and medicinal support when needed.
There is nothing to try when it comes to social emotional learning and promoting mental health at school its an integral part of education and health and is required. For the private schools we are offering this program in a very affordable cost while the revenue generated from the private schools are supporting the rural community schools for free.
