Voices
That Lead
A 5-week storytelling and mental health education programme for young Nigerians aged 18-25. Learning to understand yourself and communicate honestly is a skill. This programme teaches it.
Many young Nigerians are navigating financial pressure, emotional stress, and major life transitions without practical mental health education or the kind of community where they can process these experiences honestly.
Professional mental health support remains out of reach for most young people, financially and geographically. Community-based education is one of the most practical responses available at scale.
Voices That Lead builds that through storytelling, peer learning, and structured reflection.
Storytelling as
a Learning Tool
100+ young people will take part in the online programme, with 60 forming the core active cohort. Four weeks happen online through guided sessions, reflection exercises, and peer discussion. The programme closes in Week 5 with an in-person reflection and storytelling gathering in Lagos for 40-50 participants.
The programme is built around one idea: when young people learn to understand and express their own experiences, they become better at navigating life, connecting with others, and supporting the people around them. Storytelling is the method. Mental health literacy is the outcome.
Young people who take part in the online programme across 4 weeks
Participants tracked, assessed, and supported throughout the full programme
What Participants
Go Through
Each week builds on the last. Participants don't just consume content, they reflect, share, and practise skills in real time with their peers.
This week makes mental health feel relevant and approachable, not clinical, not abstract. The focus is on what it looks like in everyday Nigerian life, why the silence around it has real consequences, and what it means to take it seriously without stigma.
Reflection: Write down one thing you've been carrying that you've never named out loud.
Participants learn to recognise their own emotional patterns and connect them to their experiences. You cannot communicate clearly about what you don't yet understand about yourself. This week starts that work.
Reflection: Three honest things about yourself you've never said in a group setting.
This week is practical. Participants learn how to express what they feel clearly, listen to others without fixing or dismissing, and communicate in ways that build connection rather than distance.
Reflection: Share a short personal story using the storytelling structure from the session.
The final online week focuses on peer relationships: how to support someone without fixing them, how to recognise when someone needs more than you can offer, and how community works as a practical buffer against mental health decline.
Reflection: Who in your life would benefit from you being better at this? Write them something. You don't have to send it.
The programme closes with a real gathering in Lagos for 40-50 participants. After four weeks of online learning, this is where it becomes physical: people in the same room, sharing what has shifted for them. It is a meaningful close, not just a logistical endpoint. Every participant who wants to speak gets to speak.
- +Opening circle and post-programme self-assessment
- +Storytelling circle: participants share in their own words
- +20+ video testimonials captured with participant consent
- +Peer connection and programme close
Young Nigerians
Figuring It Out
This is for young people aged 18-25: students, graduates, people working, people job-hunting, people at a crossroads. The common thread is that they're navigating real pressure and haven't always had the language, tools, or community to process it well.
It's for that person who feels like they should be fine but isn't. Who can't explain what they're feeling, let alone talk about it. Who wants to be better at showing up for the people around them but doesn't know where to start.
What Participants Learn
- How to recognise and name their emotional experiences
- Practical mental health awareness in accessible, everyday language
- How to communicate honestly without shutting down or escalating
- How to listen and support peers in healthy, constructive ways
- How to tell their own story with clarity and confidence
Our Community,
In Their Own Words
These videos are from our most recent community hangout in Lagos, members speaking unscripted about what this space means to them. This is the community Voices That Lead is built from.
How We Know
It's Working
Every core cohort participant completes a self-assessment at the start and end of the programme. We measure what we set out to teach, not just whether people showed up, but whether something actually shifted in how they understand and talk about their mental health.
- Mental health awareness: does the participant understand it more clearly?
- Emotional self-awareness: can they name what they feel more accurately?
- Communication confidence: are they more comfortable expressing themselves?
- Sense of peer connection and belonging
- Willingness to support others around mental health topics
We use a pre- and post-programme self-assessment alongside facilitator observations, attendance data, and participant reflections. The closing event provides direct, unscripted documentation of what participants take away.
The Team
Behind It
Twayne Safe Haven has been building youth community in Nigeria for over 11 years. This programme grows directly from that experience and the trust built over time.
Facilitation
Our Partner
How We
Keep It Safe
This is a peer education programme, not therapy or counselling. That is made clear to every participant from the start. Sessions are structured learning environments with defined boundaries and clear support pathways.
Peer moderators are trained before the programme begins and supported throughout. Asido Foundation oversees the mental health education approach and safeguarding protocols for the full duration.
What Stays
When It's Done
For Participants
For the Organisation
This grant funds one cycle. What it builds is designed to keep going.
Programme Budget
$2,020 USD
All amounts are in US dollars, converted from the £1,500 Africa IFI grant at approximately 1.347 GBP/USD. The full grant covers all programme costs. No participant is charged anything to attend or take part.
The data support line ($174) helps ensure that participants are not excluded due to internet access costs. The contingency allocation (around 9%) accounts for practical cost variations that may come up during programme delivery. All sessions and events are free for participants.
Every Voice
Deserves to Lead
TSH has spent years building the kind of community where young people feel safe enough to be honest. Voices That Lead takes that further, turning it into a structured programme that teaches, documents, and grows.
Presented to Africa IFI · Twayne Safe Haven · twaynesafehaven.org