Being invites Proposals to fund Bold Ideas for Youth Mental Health

Deadline: 23-Apr-2024

Being has launched the request for proposals to fund bold prevention and promotion ideas that address the early drivers of mental health and wellbeing for the most underserved 10- to 24-year-olds.

Being seeks to fund innovative solutions that meet the context-specific upstream drivers of young people’s mental health and wellbeing along with ecosystem-level efforts that address the broader systemic barriers that hinder sustainable implementation and broader integration of mental health and wellbeing promotion and prevention initiatives.

Being seeks culturally sensitive and community driven approaches that account for the complex social and environmental factors contributing to young people’s mental health and wellbeing. Importantly, these approaches must take a person centered, rights-based approach, and must involve young people and people with lived experience of mental health challenges from the outset.

Three types of funding opportunities are available:

• Proof of Concept
• Transition to Scale
• Ecosystem Catalyst

Focus Areas

• Proof of Concept and Transition to Scale
  • Being seeks innovations that:
    • Focus on the prevention and promotion aspects of youth mental health needs,
    • Are age and stage appropriate, given the wide age range of the target population (i.e. 10 – 24 years),
    • Aim to support and amplify the voices of young people,
    • Deliver mental health supports through youth-friendly, health and non-health mechanisms (such as schools), and
    • Meet people where they are by integrating mental health and/or wellbeing interventions into existing education or social care systems.
    • In addition to addressing the country specific priorities, POC and TTS innovations should seek to integrate one or more of the following cross-cutting themes:
      • Tackle the outcomes of damaging gender norms and consider the mental health needs of people with diverse sexual and gender identities;
      • Consider the distinct mental health needs arising from intersecting experiences of discrimination and marginalization across various identities (such as socio-economic status, religion, etc);
      • Acknowledge the influence of power differentials on young people’s mental health and consider the limited agency and autonomy faced by young people;
      • Address stigma and discrimination related to mental illness with a specific focus on stigma experienced by young people;
• Ecosystem Catalyst
  • Colombia Focus
    • support implementation and accountability mechanisms for national youth mental health policies such as schools and community settings.
  • Ecuador Focus
    • support better alignment and collaboration among mental health stakeholders in Ecuador to advance youth mental health and their safety on the national agenda.
  • Ghana Focus
    • work with government bodies and other stakeholders to effectively integrate mental health initiatives, including innovations, into the school health programs.
  • India Focus
    • enhance multisectoral coordination to champion family-related interventions at both national and state levels. The focus will be on increasing action on this important issue, including efforts to augment domestic funding.
  • Indonesia Focus
    • strengthen coordination among mental health stakeholders in Indonesia to support accountability of national mental health policy implementation at regional and local levels, particularly those policies focused on youth, at all levels.
  • Morocco Focus
    • work with government and non-government bodies to bridge the gap between policy intent and on-the-ground implementation to ensure that adolescents in Morocco are supported by a positive school environment
  • Pakistan Focus
    • convene nationallevel stakeholders from different ministries, as well as non-government organizations, to increase their commitment, create demand and resource mobilization for youth mental health promotion and preventive approaches
  • Romania Focus
    • engage various national-level stakeholders, including the private sector, with the goal of developing national-level implementation guidance and coordination mechanisms on solutions to prevent bullying, including cyberbullying
  • Senegal Focus
    • work closely with key stakeholders, including government bodies, to improve coordination and advocacy for data driven youth mental health strategies and appropriate resourcing to enable a strong focus on prevention and promotion.
  • Sierra Leone Focus
    • support advocacy efforts with the goal of influencing national action plans and regulatory frameworks related to mental health and substance use towards effective prevention and promotion strategies and stigma reduction.
  • Tanzania Focus
    • improve national-level coordination and advocacy efforts among key stakeholders around the development, sustainable financing, and implementation of the strategic plan
  • Vietnam Focus
    • support the prioritization and integration of improved family functioning and parental / caregiver involvement in national policies and/or guidelines that govern provinces and school settings.

Funding Information

• Proof-of-Concept
  • POC funding up to $250,000 CAD will be awarded over 15, 18 or 24 months to early-stage projects that can implement, test and refine solutions to country-specific personal, social, and/or environmental factors impacting young people’s mental health and wellbeing in one of the 12 countries.
• Transition-to-Scale
  • TTS funding between $300,000 CAD and $1,500,000 CAD over 12-48 months will be awarded to support organizations that align with country-specific priorities along their scaling journey to help catalyze their sustainability and impact.
• Ecosystem Catalyst
  • EC funding between $200,000 CAD and $300,000 CAD over 24 months will be awarded to organizations that can address priority barriers to scale, such as legislation, evidence, coordination, and mobilize demand for the scale-up of effective solutions in one of the 12 countries.

Ineligible Funding

• Being will not fund the following:
  • All projects for which the core intellectual property rights are owned by a third-party institution, unless that third party:
    • grants the applicant sufficient license rights to the innovation to permit eventual scaling in low and middle-income countries; or
    • signs an undertaking to comply with Grand Challenges Canada’s Sharing and Access for Impact Strategy
  • Projects implemented in countries outside of the 12 priority countries (implemented outside of Colombia, Ecuador, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Morocco, Pakistan, Romania, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Vietnam).
  • Projects that focus on mental health treatment and care, such as reducing symptom severity for youth with mental health conditions or capacity building of health professionals to deliver treatment and care.

Eligibility Criteria

• Each applicant must meet the following criteria in order to be eligible for consideration for this request for proposals:
  • Organizations must be legally incorporated (or the equivalent) and based in any country in order to be eligible to apply for funding through this RFP; and
  • Only organizations implementing their project in at least one of Being’s 12 priority countries (Colombia, Ecuador, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Morocco, Pakistan, Romania, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Vietnam) will be considered; and
  • Preference will be given to eligible organizations according to the following order of criteria (1 being the most preferred):
    • Youth-led organizations based in one of 12 priority countries. This includes organizations in which fifty percent (50%) or more of the individuals in key leadership positions (such as senior management, Board of Directors, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer) are youth 35 years and under.
    • Organizations based in one of Being’s 12 priority countries.
    • Organizations based in a low- and middle- income country that are collaborating with a locally-based organization in at least one of Being’s 12 priority countries.
    • Other eligible organizations.

For more information, visit Being.