A recap of 2024
2024 has been an eventful year, characterised by collaboration and growth. Here is an overview of our activities this year.
A Conversation At A Time (ACAAT)
A Conversation At A Time Live are gatherings we organise to give people the opportunity to share their experiences and feelings. These spaces are designed to foster a sense of community and hopefully provide participants with strength, peace of mind, and opportunities for healing. Many individuals go through difficult situations and often feel isolated in their experiences, which can be incredibly painful. We believe that finding a supportive community where you can speak openly about your challenges—without fear of judgment or shame—can make a significant difference. This is the core purpose of our gatherings.
In our mental health work, we prioritise making services as accessible as possible. A significant aspect of this is ensuring that our services are affordable. The fee for these gatherings is Ksh 1000, but participants are welcome to contribute more if they wish. We have also seen members of our community generously sponsor others to attend the session.
This year, we successfully held four ACAAT sessions on topics including friendship breakups, body image, abortions, and setting healthy boundaries with family. A total of 31 individuals attended our sessions this year.
SYLLABUS WITH Rainbow Room Foundation
This year, we collaborated with the Rainbow Room Foundation, an organisation that offers a variety of programs and services to their community in Bungoma. We worked together to develop a mental health syllabus for their Teen Peer Mentorship program.
As part of this collaboration, we researched various topics and teaching methods and then delivered lessons to the participants. This year’s program included 39 teenage girls. The topics we covered included mental health, its importance, myths about mental health, stress and stress management, self-esteem, boundaries and values, and emotions.
One of our missions at TAP is to make mental health resources accessible to our community in Kenya, and language plays a crucial role in achieving this. So, Much of our work in this collaboration involved researching and providing information in Kiswahili to make it as accessible as possible for the participants.
BLOG POSTS
Our mission is to raise awareness about mental health, and we utilise various art forms to do this. We also believe in sharing stories to help individuals find community and feel less alone. One of the ways we achieve this is through our blog, which features written stories from interviews we’ve conducted, accompanied by illustrations created in collaboration with artists. This year, we invited various individuals to share their mental health experiences on our blog. These guest posts were paired with illustrations, which was also a collaborative effort with an artist. These contributions have enriched our blog this year, offering diverse perspectives on various mental health matters.
We are always grateful to our community for their unwavering support and belief in our mission and vision. Our community plays a vital role in helping us achieve our goals. As we close out 2024 and prepare for 2025, we aim to provide even more quality information and services related to mental health.
Let us continue ending the stigma surrounding mental health one conversation at a time and one action at a time.