SNF Global Center
Our Work with Youth
Young leaders in the mental health space in Brazil lead a session during the SNF Global Center 2025 Annual Expert Gathering in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Our Approach
Through partnerships, we empower youth from low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) to advance the SNF Global Center’s mission—amplifying youth voices, scaling evidence-based interventions, strengthening systems, and building capacity.
Our Youth Council helps shape research priorities, evaluate tools, and lead community engagement. By connecting young people with local partners, we ensure diverse perspectives are meaningfully represented in the global mental health conversation.
SNF Global Center presents its youth engagement framework at the 30th AFS Youth Assembly in New York.
Youth Engagement in Practice
Youth changemakers help shape the SNF Global Center for Child and Adolescent Mental Health at the Child Mind Institute, strengthening mental healthcare systems in their communities.
Integration With Initiatives
Youth participation is embedded across our six core initiatives, ensuring their voices guide research, policy, content creation, program testing, and implementation—building sustainable, scalable, youth-led solutions in LMICs.
Equipping Young Changemakers
Through Youth Councils in Brazil, South Africa, and Greece, and a Global Youth Advisory Council, we equip young leaders with resources, networks, and skills to drive community-led change. These councils foster collaboration, capacity-building, and shared innovation across borders.
About the Youth Councils
To ensure meaningful and inclusive engagement, the SNF Global Center supports country-level Youth Councils and a Global Youth Advisory Council. In-country youth councils also enable non-English speakers to address community-specific mental health challenges and co-design local initiatives, while the Global Youth Councils foster cross-cultural collaboration and integrates youth voices across the SNF Global Center’s six initiatives.
This approach builds on the Youth Engagement Scheme (YES), launched in Greece by the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Initiative (CAMHI) in 2022. Through five local Youth Advisory Groups in Athens, Thessaloniki, Alexandroupolis, Ioannina, and Heraklion, teens aged 13–17 meet monthly to discuss mental health, share ideas, and design school-and community-based actions.
Our Youth Councils
The Brazil Youth Council mobilizes young leaders from across the country to co-create solutions in child and adolescent mental health care. Members advise on the SNF Global Center programming, co-lead field activities, and support communications and outreach efforts.
Representing each region of Brazil, the Youth Council, under the guidance of the Institute for Health Policy Studies (IEPS), meets every two weeks and is made up of 10 members between the ages of 16-18.
The South Africa Youth Council brings together a diverse group of young people to guide research activities, support national campaigns, and shape systems-strengthening dialogues.
Members include young people from seven of the nine South African provinces, ages 18-24, with compelling records of community action. Meetings are held bi-weekly, and each member works closely with local partners, mental health leaders, and researchers.
The Global Youth Advisory Council anchors youth involvement across initiatives at the international level. Two representatives from each country-level Youth Council act as a bridge between local realities and global strategy.
This allows for more grounded implementation and the connection of local actions to broader innovations.
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Questions?
Our team is here to help. Send us a message or contact us at global@childmind.org.
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