Announcing Ember’s New Awards: Celebrating and Supporting 45+ Community Mental Health Initiatives
Nov 27, 2025
Funding grassroots mental health is still an emerging frontier — one that calls for courage, creativity, and a willingness to take risks.
Our latest global call-out brought over 1,800 applications and through over 650 of hours of listening to community-based mental health initiatives (CBMHIs), we heard familiar challenges — and new ones.
Some organisations are ready to scale proven models.
Others are navigating complex change.
Many seek recognition and targeted skills to unlock their next chapter.
These insights compelled us to pause, reflect and decide what next to ensure that our remains relevant, effective, and grounded in the lived experience of the people we champion.
Introducing Creative Award, Sparks Award, and 'Caring for Carers' Wellbeing Award
We are proud to launch three new forms of recognition and support for CBMHIs: the Creative Award, Sparks Award, and 'Caring for Carers' Wellbeing Award.
Ember Creative Award
This award recognises CBMHIs that use and integrate creative art forms in their model of care- such as use of theatre, music, photography, art-based therapies, among others. These approaches are effective, as they offer an accessible language of self-expression for individuals to articulate emotions in ways that feel safe, especially when words fall short. By incorporating these arts-based methods, CBMHIs are not only supporting individual healing but also cultivating long-term self-care practices in communities that enable individuals to manage their mental health.
Ember 'Caring for Carers' Wellbeing Award
Community-led mental health initiatives play an important role in mental health care provision, yet this work often puts the carers under a lot of strain. Often, the health and wellbeing of these carers is taken for granted, and the emotional toll of caregiving goes unrecognised. At Ember, we believe that the wellbeing of mental health caregivers is critical for the effectiveness of their work and must be actively supported. That is why we have created the Caring for the Carers Wellbeing Award, an unrestricted grant aimed at supporting the health and wellbeing of CBMHI teams.
Ember Sparks Award
The Ember Sparks Award recognises, promotes, and supports early-stage mental health initiatives in low-resource settings through a financial grant. This award celebrates CBMHIs that, although still early in their journey, show remarkable promise for impact.
These awards represent more than recognition. They mark a step forward in evolving the Ember model, scaling not by replicating a single solution, but by nurturing a diversity of approaches.
For us, scale means more voices, more ideas, more solutions — each shaped by its own context.
Toward a better-funded global mental health field, by identifying and fostering the innovations that will shape its future.