Grand Challenges 2022

People’s Welfare Project

The People’s Welfare Project describe themselves as ‘a community based and independent mental health and humanitarian organisation focused on generating long term economic benefits of good mental health and positive self-perception within communities who need it most.’ They do this by offering a two-week training course to volunteers so that they can help to provide mental health care and by having volunteer mental health specialists who can provide more urgent and specialist care. These people will then be available to talk to at pop-ups. To advertise this service, the group produced posters to be placed around hospitals, GP clinics, mental health clinics, schools and community centres, as well as flyers, a Kahoot quiz to highlight the issue of mental health to passers-by at their pop-ups, and an open letter to the Health Secretary calling for greater investment in mental health, with a series of proposals based on their research into links between poverty and mental health.