18/06/2026
A few weeks after May, Mental Health Awareness Month, we are still reflecting on the interaction we had with young people in Bafoussam.
🩵 On May 30th, Safe Space partnered with Kingdom Embassy Church, Bafoussam, during their 10th anniversary football tournament to meet young people where they are—in their community and in spaces where connection happens naturally.
🩵 Before the march to the football field, our Safe Space representative Ms. Kenyaupli Lucien had the opportunity to speak with the young people about mental health and introduced them to the Safe Space community. She shared with them that mental health is about how we feel, how we cope, and how we show up every day despite the challenges we face in life. Many of them expressed wonder and uncertainty about why they were being told about it in that moment, which made the conversation all the more necessary.
🩵 She carried along a selfie frame with this year's theme, "More Good Days Together," which created a fun way of taking pictures to capture the moment.
🩵 In the course of talking with the young people, she realised that many of them did not own smartphones and that is a challenge, because they are our target audience and they will not be able to interact with our online communities where we share content on mental health. This experience brought out the general assumption we often make when digitising content, awareness campaigns and opportunities: that many young people have phones and access to the internet. It was a reminder that there are still many young people at the margins of these conversations. They are not absent because they are uninterested; sometimes they simply do not have access.
🩵 This year Safe Space will be carrying out more sporting activities and showing up in spaces where the need for physical meetups exists.
🩵 Thank you to Kingdom Embassy Church, Bafoussam, for creating the space for these conversations and for allowing us to be part of this celebration.
Open Dreams Mastercard Foundation Africa CDC World Health Organization (WHO)