Social Entrepreneurship and Mental Health Interventions in Low Income Countries

On May 21, 2014, the Social Entrepreneurism in Mental Health working group hosted a webinar, titled "Social Entrepreneurship and Mental Health in Low-Income Countries," that explored building, sustaining, and scaling up mental health interventions in low income contexts.

The webinar was provided through a collaboration between Ashoka, the University of Toronto, and Grand Challenges Canada. Along with a general discussion about how a social entrepreneurship lens can be used to understand how highly leveraged mental health interventions develop, three social innovators joined to discuss critical questions related to building, sustaining, and scaling up initiatives. The videos by each social innovator can be found below.

In the first video, social innovator Ananda Galappatti addresses the question: "What are the key factors to consider in expansion?" Building on his experience as an Ashoka Fellow in Sri Lanka and as a leader of The Good Practice Group and the Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Network, Ananda emphasizes the importance of "tolerating uncertainty, being bold and low cost experiments".

In the second video, social innovator Maha Helali (Egypt) discusses what key strategies are to be considered when the person whose intervention is running well in their town/city wants to expand to other places in their country and abroad.

In the final video, social innovator Monira Rahman (Bangladesh) discusses building upon and being responsive to community interests and energy – and how this makes a difference.

Learn More

You can also read about SEMH on the MHIN blog, and check out the MHPSS Innovation page to learn more about this exciting website.

Join the conversation

Join MHIN as a member to comment on this video or to contribute your own webinar. Contribute to the conversation on social entrepreneurship and global mental health throughout September on Twitter #SocEnt4MH.