Imey Reach

Imey Reach

At Imey Reach, we provide mental empowerment training to young people between the ages of 15-24 on the dangers of non-violent cultism and how to avoid them as they transition into adulthood.

Mission statement

To connect youth to positive experiences and behaviours and help them recognize the dangers of social vices which can hinder their individual and overall community’s growth.

Summary of relevant work

We visit schools and churches and give mental empowerment training on how pressures from peers, family and society can create cognitive dissonance and distress. This withdraws youth from engaging in positive activities that they find solace in and can lead them to participate in dangerous groups that behave in unconventional and damaging ways.

We conducted a survey to explore what cultism means to people in the community. While some of the responses included acts of violence like ‘killings and bloodshed’, a cult is defined as a group of people led by an authoritarian figure who encourages his followers to engage in unconventional and often secretive activities that can be socially maladaptive i.e. substance abuse, violent acts and other anti-social behaviours.

Given that participants of the survey chose to define cultism through just one of its many unconventional manners i.e. ‘violence’, ImeyReach identified the need to provide education and training to highlight the violent and non-violent types of cultism in order to better inform members of the community and young people to recognize and minimize participation from these types of damaging groups.

Some of our work in the past includes the following:

  • We visited an orphanage called the Children Center and Red Cross in Lagos, Nigeria and aside from gifting the children there, we gave a mental health empowerment training on learning to say ‘no’ to social vices. The volunteers that came along were also trained on selflessness and how to be mentally empowered against social vices.

The number of young people that attended our sessions:

  • 30 Children
  • 15 Teenagers
  • 20 Adults

Key partners

Seeking collaboration with

Experts by experience/service users
Other organizations
Policy makers
Researchers

Details

Approach(es)
Advocacy
Detection and diagnosis
Empowerment and service user involvement
Human rights
Prevention and promotion
Task sharing
Training, education and capacity building
Treatment, care and rehabilitation
Disorder(s)
Alcohol/drug use disorders
Child behavioural and developmental disorders
Depression/anxiety/stress-related disorders
Region(s)
Africa
Population(s)
Adults
Children and adolescents
Humanitarian and conflict health
Setting(s)
Community
Primary care
School
Specialist care
Workplace
Country(s)
Nigeria