Today, Born This Way Foundation and Cotton On announced our $3,000,000 funding of 65 youth-centered organizations across ten countries through the Kindness in Community Fund, among the largest funding efforts to provide direct support for youth mental health across the world.
We invite you to celebrate, support, and learn how you can get involved with these youth-centered organizations below!
AUSTRALIA
Batyr
Seeks to create a world where all young people lead mentally healthy lives by providing mental health education and early intervention with an emphasis on peer-to-peer lived-experience storytelling, mental health literacy education, and stigma reduction.
Human Nature
Dedicated to offering innovative, nature-based mental health support for young people, focusing on youth empowerment through outdoor therapy.
LifeChanger
Strives to be a catalyst for positive change, creating a world where every young person is elevated to their fullest potential.
Live4Life
Aims to improve youth mental health and reduce suicide in rural and regional communities across Australia. Their Model is the only mental health education and youth suicide prevention model designed specifically for rural communities.
MAN UP
Empowers young men and redefines masculinity by aiming to change the phrase ‘MAN UP’ to mean something positive: to live authentically from one’s heart, embrace vulnerability, and hold one another accountable to stand up for what is right.
Minus18
Australia’s largest charity for LGBTQIA+ young people. For 25 years, they’ve created life affirming events, delivered free education and resources, and driven inclusion campaigns, advocating for an Australia where all queer young people feel safe and empowered to be themselves.
Project Rockit
Australia’s youth-driven movement to cultivate kind, inclusive, and respectful school communities by equipping young people with the tools to challenge bullying, foster empathy and peer connection, build healthy relationships, and grow positive mental health and resilience.
Raise Foundation
Impacts young people through early intervention and evidence-based mentoring in high schools to ensure they are able to navigate challenges, believe in themselves and others, and are equipped to shape a purposeful life.
ReachOut Australia
Better mental health and wellbeing for all young people in Australia. For over 25 years, ReachOut has been championing access to free digital and online mental health support where young people can chat anonymously.
Satellite Foundation
Connects and empowers young people, working with them to support their individual, ongoing journey by providing access to safe, creative, and inclusive spaces for brave conversations that enhance their mental health, wellbeing, and connectedness.
Strong Brother Strong Sister
Ensures all Australian First Nations Children and Youth have equal opportunities to live healthy, happy, culturally connected, and self-determined futures and lifestyle, which creates generational impact and change.
The Flourish Journey
Fostering a generation of empowered, resilient, and connected teenage girls who can shape a future where everyone flourishes as their best selves.
Youth Opportunities
Creates opportunities for young people to develop lifelong skills, habits, and confidence to thrive. Support thousands of young people with wellbeing intervention and leadership development programs, equipping them with the skills to overcome adversity and reach their full potential.
Youth Projects
Provides front line support to young people and individuals experiencing disadvantage, unemployment, homelessness, and substance abuse.
Zero2Hero
Dedicated to educating, engaging, and empowering young heroes to become mental health leaders and help prevent suicide in Western Australia.
BRAZIL
ASec+
Connecting individuals to their full potential, promoting the social-emotional skills necessary to support themselves and others, and deal with life’s challenges in a positive and conscious way.
Casa1
Serves as a cultural center and free mental health clinic for LGBTQ+ young people who were expelled from home by their family due to their sexual orientation and/or gender identity.
Instituto fazendo história
Supports young people in shelters separated from their families to become capable of building powerful life stories, interrupting a cycle of abandonment, rupture, and violence.
Mapa do acolhimento
Helps women break the cycle of violence and regain autonomy over their lives by providing qualified and integrated support to women who have suffered gender-based violence. We believe no woman needs to suffer alone.
HONG KONG
Body Banter
Empowers youth voices in conversations about body image and mental health through programs and workshops that aim to foster curiosity and courage in communities.
Mind HK
Aims to achieve good mental health for young people in Hong Kong and ensure no one has to face a mental health problem alone by improving the awareness of mental health, removing the associated stigma, and providing talk therapy.
The New Normal
Offers a completely free peer-to-peer support alternative to one-on-one therapy, providing spaces that are open and non-judgemental.
The Zubin Foundation
Improving the lives of Hong Kong’s ethnic minorities by reducing suffering and providing opportunities through outreach work and driving systemic change.
MALAYSIA
Malaysian MH Association
Promotes mental wellbeing in the community and provides support for people with mental health challenges (and their caregivers) through support service provision, education, training, research, and advocacy.
NYAWA
Empowers the public with awareness on mental health issues, informing and improving mental health understanding and delivery through programming, and independent, objective, and nonpartisan research.
Tongle
Aims to raise public awareness on the importance of mental health, destigmatize mental health problems, and put mental health into action by working with organizations to promote a positive mental health culture.
NEW ZEALAND
Voices of Hope
Believes in the power of sharing lived experience to create positive change with a storytelling platform to bring better understanding of mental health challenges, promote help-seeking behaviours and useful resources, and ultimately spread hope.
SOUTH AFRICA
Community Keepers
Fosters ‘beautiful minds in every school’ by investing in the mental wellbeing of learners and their caregivers to create an environment where everyone feels a sense of belonging and everyone can thrive.
Khululeka Grief Support
Supports children and teens who have lost their parents (primarily to the HIV epidemic) while training and mentoring social workers and teachers, child and youth care workers and home-based caretakers, and community-based organisation volunteers and parents across South Africa.
Lefika La Phodiso
Africa’s first organization offering community art counseling located in inner-city Johannesburg that seeks to provide safe spaces in which creativity and containment nourish emotional development and strengthen relationships.
Little Lions Child Coaching
Envisions a world where every child’s journey into adulthood is marked by a profound understanding of their mental wellbeing and a resilient spirit by normalizing mental health conversations through both fun and positive games based on psychological methods.
PHOLA NPO
Provides psychological support and life skills using experiential learning approaches for children who have experienced psychological distress due to HIV/AIDS, violence and abuse, and poverty, reaching children through mobile counseling vans in their respective schools, churches, social clubs, etc.
Waves for Change
Provides evidence-driven surf therapy across five flagship sites in South Africa.
SINGAPORE
Singapore Association for Mental Health
Improves the lives of persons with mental health issues through rehabilitation and reintegration and works to promote acceptance and respect for persons with mental illness while also improving the mental resilience of their community.
THAILAND
Daughters Rising
Empowers at-risk girls to end trafficking and exploitation in their communities and break the cycle of poverty.
PlayOnside
Works with migrant, stateless, and refugee children displaced from Myanmar utilizing sports to promote social inclusion and gender equality, and also works with non-formal schools in Mae Sot to improve the emotional resilience of children and to create a safe and friendly environment.
Sati App
A peer listening app that promotes peer support, builds public understanding of psychological first aid, and strives to increase access to affordable mental health care, especially in the face of a scarcity of mental health resources.
SATI Foundation
Aims to improve healthcare and education for at-risk and underserved young people in Thailand through learning workshops and livelihood programs that provide a medium for expression, mindfulness, healing, education, and preventive healthcare.
UNITED KINGDOM
Beyond
Tackles the growing mental health crisis affecting young people in the UK by addressing a lack of access to support and creating opportunities for early and personalized interventions.
Emotion Dysregulation in Autism
Provides peer support, training, and social action for autistic young people in the Birmingham area utilizing co-produced research, social action workshops, and psychologically-informed peer support.
52 Lives School of Kindness
Helps schools encourage kindness and help young people understand the effect kindness can have on themselves, on others, and on the world.
Sister System
Bridges the gap between care-affected girls and mainstream society, by working alongside them to ensure they have the same opportunities everyone else has – at home, school, work and within their communities.
The Mix
The UK’s leading support service for young people connects them to experts and peers to talk about everything from money to mental health, homelessness to jobs, break-ups to drugs and more.
YoungMinds
Aims to prevent young people’s mental health from reaching a crisis point.
UNITED STATES
Aliento
Serves undocumented, DACA, and mixed immigration status families to transform trauma into hope and action.
Artist Mentorship Program (AMP)
Supports youth in Portland, Oregon navigating the trauma of homelessness by creating community, relationships, and music and arts mentorships.
Black Girls Smile
Empowers the mental health and wellbeing of young Black women and girls through culturally and gender-responsive educational programming, support initiatives, and resource connections.
Centre LGBT+
Connects the community through LGBTQ+ education, advocacy, and activities in Centre County, Pennsylvania.
COR
Offers support and tools for Atlanta youth to overcome structural disadvantages and flourish at school and beyond.
Ever Forward Club
Mentoring underserved youth in middle and high school by providing them with safe, brave communities that build character and transform lives.
#HalfTheStory
Empowers the next generation’s relationship with technology, challenging how and why technology impacts people’s minds.
Joy as Resistance
Exists to increase radically inclusive, supportive spaces for queer youth, and offers individualized mental health services and mentorship to LGBTQ+ youth.
Letters to Strangers
Gathers and sends anonymous, heartfelt written letters that offer support for those who are fighting through difficult times.
Libera
Aims to identify and eliminate barriers in the lives of women and teens in West Virginia.
National Youth Foundation
Promotes diversity, inclusion, and gender equality through innovative literary programs.
Ryan Bartel Foundation
Aims to prevent youth suicide through awareness, upstream educational programs and activities that support and empower youth, families and the community at-large.
Sad Girls Club
Committed to destigmatizing mental wellness for millennial and Gen Z womxn, girls, and femmes of color.
Sasha Bruce
Helps young people in Washington, D.C. find safe homes, achieve and maintain good physical and mental health, create and strengthen supportive and stable families, and explore opportunities in education and careers.
Stand with Trans
Helps trans youth build resilience, gain confidence and find hope for a future filled with joy.
Teens 4 Teens Help
Empowers teens who are suffering from emotional and mental health issues to choose their own recovery.
Teen Line (Didi Hirsch)
A hotline that provides peer-to-peer support and an anonymous, nonjudgmental space for youth.
The Laurel Foundation
Serves transgender and gender-diverse youth, as well as children, youth, and families affected by HIV/AIDS.
The Unbreakable Org
Supports individuals and communities who’ve been impacted by gun violence in the aftermath of tragedy.
We Are Family
Provides affirming spaces for LGBTQI+ and ally youth up to the age of 24 in South Carolina.
Youth Pride
Meets the unique, ongoing needs of LGBTQ+ youth and young adults through direct service, support, advocacy, and education.