Announcing Ember Nurture Partnerships: Investing More, for Longer
Oct 10, 2025
Five years ago, Ember Mental Health began with a simple mission: to stand beside community-based mental health organisations, offering mentorship, flexible funding, and skills to help their ideas thrive.
Since then, we have supported and invested in more than 50 community-based organisations across 25+ countries—from rural clinics in Sierra Leone to urban collectives in Colombia—all united by one goal: bringing mental health care closer to the people who need it most.
Our approach has worked. These Ember Innovators have built stronger organisations, expanded services, and delivered impact in their communities, strengthening leadership, sharpening strategy, establishing robust systems, growing visibility with funders, and securing resources to sustain and scale their missions.
Despite growing awareness, the global mental health sector is still constrained by short-term, fragmented, and risk-averse funding. The result: promising innovations stall before reaching scale and proven models struggle to stay resilient in shifting contexts.
Yet many of our Innovators have already validated their models and shown measurable results. Some are ready to scale proven approaches into new regions and populations. Others are navigating complex transitions that demand flexibility and resilience.
What they all need is the same: patient, long-term investment.
Introducing Ember Nurture Partnerships
With the expansion of the Ember Fund, we are proud to launch Ember Nurture Partnerships. This is a new round of catalytic, funding for existing high-potential Ember Innovators, designed to support both their scale and their resilience.
The Ember Nurture Partnerships will provide a new round of flexible, unrestricted funding to 6 Innovators, nurturing their next stage of growth and long-term sustainability.
1. Child, Adolescent and Family Services (CAFS), Sri Lanka: CAFS is a not-for-profit organisation in Sri Lanka that provides holistic, inclusive, and accessible mental health care through an integrated, multidimensional approach. As part of Ember Nurture Partnership, CAFS aims to expand their work in new regions of Sri Lanka, explore new income-generation avenues, and support staff wellbeing.
2. Ahumuza Centre, Church of Uganda - Kisiizi Hospital, Uganda: Kisiizi Hospital is the biggest not-for-profit mental health care provider in rural South-West Uganda. Ahumuza Centre is dedicated to providing high quality mental health care through in- and out-patient clinics, community outreach programmes and health promotion activities to people with mental health conditions. As part of Ember Nurture Partnership, they aim to scale mental health care in communities and strategically move forward.
3. Mental Health and Wellbeing on Campus (MH+WB), Kenya: The mission of MH+WB is to improve the mental health and wellbeing of university students and create a more supportive institutional environment as they navigate the stresses of their studies. They provide education and training about mental health amongst students and university staff; do awareness programs by using arts, social media, local celebrities; and provide counselling and referral services to the students in need. As part of Ember Nurture Partnership, MH+WB aims to scale the programme to move strategically forward.
4. Mental Health Service Users Association (MHSUA), Ethiopia: MHSUA is an association of mental health care users in Ethiopia run by people with lived experience with the aim to increase community awareness about mental health, reduce stigma, support people with lived experience to live in dignity, and empower service users and their families to be their own advocates in the development and improvement of mental health care. Under the Ember Nurture Partnership, MHSUA aims to support the organisation’s resilience through operational growth, helping them achieve stronger community outreach and enhanced advocacy.
5. ACUFA, Argentina: ACUFA is an association that runs an integrated support program for people with mental health problems and their families, including peer support groups and income-generating activities.
6. Open Hands, Botswana: Open Hands Botswana is a project supporting the mental health needs of the LGBTQIA+ community in Botswana by providing peer support, self-care workshops, and a referral network for specialist services. It is a project under the parent organisation Friends of Diversity, which offers broader outreach and practical support to the community. As part of Ember Nurture Partnership, Open Hands plans to sustain the operations of the organisation, increase outreach, support networks and referrals for LGBTQIA+ communities.
Our Approach
At Ember, we see our role as a funder committed to changing the way mental health is financed. Our philosophy is built on:
Flexible, catalytic funding
Deep trust and collaboration
Rigorous governance without bureaucracy
Open, honest communication
This approach, patient, flexible, and rooted in trust, is what makes it possible for community organisations not just to survive, but to thrive.
Funding grassroots mental health remains an emerging frontier—one that calls for courage, creativity, and a willingness to take risks. As the field evolves, Ember will continue to listen, learn, and refine our support so it stays relevant, effective, and grounded in lived experience.