Over 1 billion people worldwide are living with a mental health condition. COVID-19 drove a 25% global surge in anxiety, depression, and other mental health conditions, and the world has yet to recover. This is not a distant crisis. It is a reality that touches every family, every community, and every generation. Nawiri exists to meet it, one child, one community, and one conversation at a time.
Sources: WHO World Mental Health Today, September 2025 · JAMA Psychiatry 2025 · Project HOPE 2024 · The Lancet 2024
Accessible, culturally grounded programs that bring mental wellness into the spaces where people live, learn, gather, and grow.
Kilifi County, Kenya
We deliver accessible, culturally grounded mental health education in schools, community spaces, and through digital channels giving people the language to name what they feel and the understanding that they are not alone. Our psychoeducation programs challenge myths, reduce stigma, and open the conversations that communities have been waiting to have.
Kilifi County, Kenya
We establish evidence-based, professionally facilitated support systems, counseling networks, and safe spaces for affected individuals and families covering all aspects of mental health. Our support programs serve vulnerable populations including institutionalised children, orphans, youth in conflict with the law, and individuals within specialized care facilities as well as marginalized groups within the community.
Schools across Kilifi County
Schools are where mental health is first shaped and where it is most often left unaddressed. We work alongside school communities to deliver structured mental health programs for students and staff, building environments where no one has to struggle alone and in silence. Teachers are equipped with the tools to notice, respond, and refer.
Kilifi County and beyond
We campaign actively against mental health stigma and advocate for the rights of persons with psychosocial challenges challenging the societal focus on hyper-productivity at the cost of human wellness. Through community dialogues, digital campaigns, and institutional outreach, we work to make mental health a public conversation, not a private burden.
Kilifi County, Kenya
We train community health promoters, school staff, institutional caregivers, and grassroots volunteers in basic psychological first aid and trauma-informed care principles so that mental health support extends beyond our team and becomes part of how communities care for themselves.
The Nawiri Akili Initiative is funded by community sponsorships, donor contributions, Funding and grant programs and international and local strategic partnerships. Every contribution is ring-fenced for community programs, psychosocial support, mental health education, awareness and outreach programs across Kilifi County and beyond. Your contribution is what makes this work possible.
See All Ways to Give →“When minds are nurtured, communities transform. We exist to make sure nothing stands in the way.”
