Deadline: 08-Jan-2025
Being is seeking proposals for Mental Health and Wellbeing of Young People Program.
Being seeks bold prevention and promotion ideas to meet the mental health needs of the most underserved 10- to 24-year-olds.
They fund culturally sensitive, community driven, youth-friendly, innovative approaches that account for the complex social, cultural and environmental drivers contributing to young people’s mental health and wellbeing in at least one of the priority countries.
Focus Areas
- Prevention and promotion initiatives should address the various drivers of mental health by reducing risks, building resilience and establishing supportive environments for mental health.
- This requires action beyond the health sector, and can involve “education, labour, justice, transport, environment, housing, and welfare sectors.” Importantly, these initiatives 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.
Types of Funding
- There are three types of available funding opportunities:
- Proof of Concept (POC)
- Proof of Concept grants support early-stage innovations to test and refine bold ideas. The goal of these grants is to strengthen the pipeline of tested mental health innovations targeted at young people that are ideally developed and managed by young people themselves.
- Transition to Scale (TTS)
- Transition to Scale grant support tested innovations along their scaling journey. The goal of transition to scale funding is to support innovators to build out the evidence and/or attract additional capital and smart partnerships from local governments, multilateral institutions and/or private investors.
- Ecosystem Catalyst (EC)
- Ecosystem Catalyst grants support ecosystem-level solutions that address the broader systemic barriers that hinder sustainable implementation and broader integration of mental health and wellbeing into adjacent areas and begin to build local demand. The goal is to strengthen local ecosystems for youth mental health.
- Proof of Concept (POC)
Funding Information
- Proof of Concept (POC): funding of up to $250,000 CAD over 15, 18 or 24 months is available under the RFP.
- Transition to Scale (TTS): $300,000 CAD and $1,500,000 CAD over 12–48 months.
- Ecosystem Catalyst: funding between CAD $200,000 – $300,000 over 24 months is available.
Geographic Focus
- Colombia, Ecuador, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Morocco, Pakistan, Romania, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Vietnam.
Outcomes
- They welcome applications with other relevant priority health outcomes:
- Improved wellbeing
- Improved life satisfaction
- Improved emotional regulation
- Improved connectedness
- Improved social capital
- Improved self esteem
- Improved coping
- Improved self-efficacy
- Improved resilience
- Effects on knowledge (ex. mental health literacy)
- Effects on attitudes (ex. reductions on stigmatizing attitudes)
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
- Preference will be given to eligible organizations according to the following order of criteria
- 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.
Ineligibility Criteria
- 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.
- All projects for which the core intellectual property rights are owned by a third-party institution, unless that third party:
For more information, visit Being.
