In 2021, we collaborated with the Malaysian Mental Health Association (MMHA) in response to the mental health crisis that Malaysia faced at the time, given the spike in Covid-19 cases and the lockdowns we experienced. All initiatives were fully sponsored by the Green Ribbon Group. We hope our support created a domino effect whereby the skills that participants learnt in these programmes have trickled down into their communities.
The collaboration and data collected from the initiatives were presented at the 23rd World Federation for Mental Health (WFMH) Congress in June 2022. The Green Ribbon Group was part of the first Malaysian delegation to attend the WFMH Congress, led by our Founder and President YAM Tengku Puteri Iman Afzan, whose Patronage of the Congress was the first for an Asian representative.
In 2022, our focus is to train and mobilise more leaders in mental health. A holistic ecosystem for an empathetic, world-class community approach to mental health in Malaysia must be sustainable in the long-run. We are also of the view that raising awareness must be accompanied by basic skills to support ourselves and one another. We must be able to redirect those in distress to the appropriate services for help.
The Green Ribbon Group was awarded with our very first grant in March 2022 from Yayasan TM to pilot mental health literacy programmes in universities and secondary schools. Our contribution to narrowing existing gaps in accessibility to mental healthcare is to establish community champions and incorporate them into the mental health resource pool.
