Introducing Ember's 2025 Cohort of Community Mental Health Partners
May 19, 2025
We are thrilled to announce the 15 community-based mental health initiatives we are partnering with for Ember Cohort 2025.
In July 2024, we invited community-based mental health organisations working in low- and middle-income countries to apply for Ember’s next cohort of partners.
We received over 1800 applications from initiatives in more than 90 countries.
This number reaffirms our belief- Community-based mental health initiatives are at the cutting edge of innovation — it's not more innovation we need, but greater recognition, support, and investment in the innovative work they're doing.
Over the past year, we’ve had the privilege of reading, listening, reflecting, and connecting, through interviews, deep-dive conversations, and collaborative exploration workshops, to discover these grassroots organisations doing truly transformational work.
We’re excited to introduce you the 15 community-based mental health initiatives selected for the Ember Cohort 2025, representing 12 countries from Palestine to Mexico, and India to Madagascar. Over the next 12 months, the Ember team will focus on understanding their priorities, and co-designing tailored support to address their needs and challenges.
These organisations use locally rooted and creative tools such as music, storytelling, mountain biking, culturally adapted WHO models, mobile therapy, and art to provide mental health support to diverse population groups, ranging from rural communities, homeless women, LGTBTQIA+ individuals, neurodivergent children, incarcerated youth, young mothers and displaced people.
Ember's vision has generously been supported by the SHM Foundation, Vitol Foundation, ICONIQ, Kokoro and Schooner Foundation.
We are incredibly grateful to the Ember Working Group, our experts advisory team, for their guidance in making these selections.
Click here to watch the announcement video
Read on to learn about the work of these inspiring initiatives.
Ember Mentorship Cohort 2025
ADORE Mental Wellbeing and Care, Myanmar
ADORE is a youth-led mental health organisation that offers a hybrid online and offline approach that provides peer support, trauma-informed care, safe spaces and healing, catering to local communities and diaspora groups in Myanmar.
Alternatives Madagascar, Madagascar
Alternatives Madagascar combines mental health care with life skills, economic empowerment, and sexual and reproductive health services, creating tools for self-expression and increasing access to care to provide mental health support to incarcerated youth, marginalised women and women in situations of prostitution.
Bwindi Community Hospital, Uganda
Bwindi Community Hospital delivers counselling, medication, and occupational therapy to vulnerable communities along the Uganda–DRC border, with clinics run by WHO mhGAP-trained staff to ensure accessible, community-based mental health care.
Centro 32, Mexico
Centro 32 is a non-profit organisation that provides psychosocial support, counselling and comprehensive services to independent women, children, adolescents and LGBTIQ+ people in contexts of human mobility, including refugees, people displaced by violence, asylum seekers, repatriated persons, returnees and unaccompanied children.
Centre for Arts-based Methodologies & Wellbeing (CFAW), Pakistan
CFAW delivers a blend of mental health and arts to support individuals and families navigating psychological stress and generational trauma through services such as therapies, trauma-informed training, and community events in safe inclusive spaces such as its Wellbeing Hub.
Centro de Atención a Niños con Necesidades Educativas Especiales
(Centre for the Support of Children with Special Education Needs), Honduras
CNNEE is a lifeline for children with developmental, neurological, and mental health needs, offering vital psycho-pedagogical support through holistic interventions like early stimulation, teacher training, and equine-assisted therapy in a region where educational inclusion remains a distant goal.
Dlalanathi (Play with Us), South Africa
Dlalanathi supports healthy relationships by training caregivers and parents to use play-based and trauma-informed approaches to translate therapeutic practices into structured, community-based programmes—strengthening adult–child bonds and caregiver mental health over the life course, especially in communities affected by trauma, poverty, violence, and generational HIV.
Golden Vision Society, Nepal
GVS aims to raise mental health awareness, reduce stigma, and improve access to care in partnership with government bodies, law enforcement agencies, schools, and community healthcare workers, specifically prioritising serving women and children from remote rural areas and people from unprivileged communities.
Grassroots Transitional House, Kenya
GTH provides mental health and wellbeing services such as safe shelter, economic empowerment, and gender-affirming psychological support to LGBTQIA+ community in the rural Mount Kenya.
Inside Out, South Africa
InsideOut NPO is a collective of trainers and community workers dedicated to social justice, healing, and transformation, supporting individuals and communities affected by violence and oppression through a people-centered, systemic approach.
Mata Jai Kaur Maternal and Child Health Centre (MJK), India
MJK's Kushee Mamta is a rural maternal mental health program that trains women to be community counsellors who provide mental health support to women who are pregnant, new mothers, and those who experience depression, gender-based violence and suicidal thoughts.
Pedal Project, South Africa
Pedal Project empowers under-resourced children to overcome trauma and instability through mountain biking, combining physical activity with caring mentorship and therapeutic support to build emotional resilience, confidence, and connection in a safe and joyful environment.
Um Pouco d’arte, Mozambique
This organisation provides creative, trauma-informed activities such as translated songs, comic strips, poetry, and spoken words to promote mental health and collective healing through music, art, and storytelling among women and girls experiencing gender-based violence.
Urja Trust, India
This grassroots organisation supports homeless young women who have faced gender-based violence, caste discrimination, and mental health stigma by providing shelter, healthcare, employment, education, legal aid, access to civil entitlements, and a trauma-informed, holistic, and inclusive therapeutic approach that nurtures the mind, body, and soul through counseling, expressive arts therapy, and Dance Movement Therapy.
Yes Theatre for Communication among Youth, Palestine
Yes Theatre uses the transformative power of drama, arts and storytelling to empower children, youth and marginalised communities with life skills, psychological support, and an outlet for creative expression.