Youth First Kenya
Background
Projections indicate that by 2030, mental illness will pose the greatest threat to economic growth among all non-communicable diseases. At least one in seven youth in Sub-Saharan Africa face mental health problems and approximately one in ten have a diagnosable mental illness. Mental health concerns among youth are further fueled by systems of entrenched inequities, discrimination, and resource scarcity, exacerbated by a lack of access to services.
Kenya’s youth are no exception: the Kenyan government recently called mental health a “ticking time bomb,” yet found no widely-available mental health prevention and promotion services in Kenya. The impacts of poor mental health amongst Kenyan youth can be seen in nearly all aspects of their daily lives, including rising alcohol and drug misuse, gender-based violence, teenage pregnancies, increasing gambling, and school dropout – all of which contribute to a perpetual cycle of poverty, poor mental and physical health, and violence.
Youth First Kenya Responds
Youth First Kenya is a teacher-facilitated, school-based program in Kenya that draws from the latest research in resilience, Positive Psychology, and Social-Emotional Learning, in which potential risks or threats to wellbeing are addressed by boosting internal assets and external supports.
The program seeks to build social and emotional assets, such as coping skills, character strengths, and positive self-regard, as well as improve adolescent health. Students who are well equipped with such internal resources coupled with stronger external supports, have been shown to experience increased agency, reduced rates of depression, have improved social skills, remain in and become more engaged at school, and perform better academically.
Youth First Kenya also focuses on teacher engagement and wellbeing, and addresses issues of gender equality, gender relations, and gender rights.
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Youth First Scale-up
After successful pilots of Youth First Kenya in Kajiado and Tharaka Nithi counties, conducted in 2018 amongst nomadic (Maasai) and rural populations, WorldBeing, in partnership with our local NGO partner, BasicNeeds BasicRights Kenya, entered into an extensive multi-year agreement with the Kenya Ministry of Education to scale and institutionalize Youth First Kenya nationwide. At scale, over time it is our intention to integrate wellbeing education into 20,000 government junior secondary schools, training 40,000 teachers and impacting 1.2 million youth annually. To date, nearly 5,000 teachers have been trained in over 2,000 schools, impacting over 188,000 students.
In 2025, WorldBeing and BasicNeeds launched an exciting new partnership with The Centre for Mathematics, Science and Technology Education in Africa (CEMASTEA), a government teacher training institution dedicated to building the capacity of teachers for effective curriculum delivery. Within this partnership, CEMASTEA national trainers will be trained by WorldBeing and BasicNeeds to implement a cascade training-of-trainers strategy – the first step in beginning a shift to the Government of Kenya education system to take on ownership of Youth First Kenya and wellbeing programming.
Intended outcomes of this innovative 3-way partnership include improved teacher capacity in life skills and wellbeing education, improved teacher-student relationships and enhanced gender-responsive teaching methods. Key indicators will measure teachers' ability to integrate wellbeing skills into their teaching and increase confidence in wellbeing practices, particularly among girls. The training will also address teacher wellbeing, build resilience, and support sustainable implementation through effective training models.
In 2025, the partnership is projected to train 2,800 teachers to facilitate Youth First Kenya for 187,400 students across approximately 3,000 schools.
This project represents a catalytic step to universalize mental health and wellbeing programming for youth in Kenya, so that no matter their background, identity, situation, or geography, youth will be able to access the skills for thriving. Once institutionalized within the government education system, Kenya will represent one of the first low-and middle-income countries to offer such school-based programs nationally.
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Program Results
In a 2018 pre/post intervention evaluation of Youth First Kenya, findings indicated a number of positive outcomes such as:
- Resilience increased by 21%
- Social wellbeing increased by 9.9%
- Self-efficacy increased by 7.9%
The latest from WorldBeing
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