The Impact Compass
Welcome to the Impact Compass Podcast. In this podcast, we explore opportunities in the nonprofit and social impact space and amplify the impact of their leaders. We do this by finding amazing nonprofit and social impact organizations and their leaders, we share their stories, their triumphs, and their struggles in this dynamic, complex, and competitive space. By doing this, we hope to,
· Showcase how the work of these amazing leaders and their organizations is impacting and changing their communities.
· Second, Inspire a new generation of nonprofit and social impact professionals determined to create an even better world.
· Third, inform the sector of new and emerging practices from nonprofits and social impact practices in Africa. And,
· Make them findable so that they can be fundable.
The Impact Compass
Episode 12: Youth Mental Health with Tom Osborn
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Across the world, more than 250 million young people are facing mental health issues. 1 in 2 young people in Kenya are facing mental health issues primarily anxiety and depression. This should be declared a national disaster! Youth mental health crisis should be a #1 public health priority!
While it is impressive that young people are increasingly talking about mental health, they face high barriers to care, provider shortage, including severe service shortages (1 expert per 1 million people in Kenya), stigma, and underfunding.
A novel solution is changing this… The Shamiri Institute has developed a solution for young people by young people to solve the mental health crisis. At the core of this is Founder Tom Osborn who is a multiple award winner including the Forbes 30 Under 30, 2026 Elevate Prize and a Fellow at TED, Ashoka, Echoing Green, Mulago etc.
Learning from his own experiences in high school, being bundled out of his own innovation that he started at barely 18 years, he weathered challenges ending up at Harvard and today has authored over 50 peer-reviewed papers in publications including in the JAMA Psychiatry and The Lancet.
Through the Shamiri Institute, Tom is addressing youth mental health in Kenya and Africa through a combination of innovative approaches that will brigge the gap in mental health access for young people. These approaches include training of young people to offer peer based support, leveraging technology to increase access and rigorous research to build evidence for mental health intervention in Africa, acknowledging that current models are not built for the realities of the continent.
The Shamiri Institute is on the ascendancy and aims to reach 1,000,000 young people per year by 2031. You can learn more about Tom and this impressive work at www.shamiri.co or in the socials @TomOsborn