Episode 9 | The Future of Mental Health In Kenya With Shamiri

Key Moments & Timestamps

0:00 | Introduction

1:58 | Meet Tom Osborn
Tom shares his upbringing on a sugarcane farm in rural Kenya, the academic pressures he faced, and the early experiences that inspired him to become a social entrepreneur.

4:17 | The Personal Spark for Mental Health Work
Tom reflects on the suicide of a classmate and his own struggles with anxiety during high school, which later came into focus through a psychology course in college and his work through Shamiri.

9:02 | Mental Health Needs in Kenya and Globally
Tom explains how traditional systems are failing youth mental health and why new approaches are needed both in Kenya and globally.

12:33 | The Shamiri Model: Three-Tiered Care
Overview of Shamiri’s model: training lay “fellow” providers, using evidence-based group sessions in schools, and structured referrals to professionals for complex cases.

18:49 | Evidence-Based Interventions That Work
Shamiri focuses on practical mental health treatment—and tracks outcomes with rigorous research and RCTs.

21:32 | Scaling Through Tech, Optimization, and Local WorkforceHow Shamiri sees a scaled path to sustainability and mass reach across Kenya and around the world. 

24:48 | How Shamiri Views Scale. Hint: It’s not just about numbers!
Tom describes how scale for Shamiri is not just about reaching a million youth around the world, but ensuring the quality of treatment and tracking the changes in every individual’s life. 

30:03 | Collaborating with Government and Education Systems
Tom outlines Shamiri’s partnerships with Kenya’s Ministries of Health and Education to embed mental health care at the national level.

35:49 | How You Can Help
Tom outlines ways to support Shamiri: donations, tech and comms support, government engagement, and simplifying the model for broader replication.

39:30 | Impact Opportunity Segment with Jaxson Thomas
Co-host Jaxson Thomas summarizes Shamiri’s model, impact, and the importance of scalable, evidence-backed mental health solutions.

42:50 | How to Get Involved
Listeners can donate at shamiri.co, support through their Donor-Advised Fund, or email podcast@fiercephilanthropy.org to get connected.

Episode Transcript

Tom Osborn - We were working in this all girl secondary school with this young girl had really clinically elevated and suicidal depression and so we ran the program for four weeks. The school semester ended. But three years later in 2023, when  I went to visit one of the school sites that we were working on. I was really moved when I saw the girl as one of our providers now leading group sessions.

And that just spoke to not just the effect that it had on her personally, but also just how consequential it was in her life that she, after graduating from high school, signed up to be one of the providers to give back in the similar way that the programming had helped her.

Todd Manwaring - Welcome to the Impact Innovations Podcast presented by Fierce Philanthropy, where we help you become a more impactful philanthropist. 

We're thankful for the production sponsorship of UI Charitable. 

This is episode nine. I'm your host, Todd Manwaring. 

You just heard a short clip from our conversation where Tom Osborn, founder and CEO of Shamiri, explains how they've created a solution to bring scalable mental health solutions to Kenya by creating a triaged system in secondary schools where peers assist most students and social workers and psychologists are available for more difficult situations.

Shamiri has brought mental health care that works to hundreds of thousands of people. Later, after the interview, we will dive into how you can support Shamiri. Let's jump into the interview.

Hello, welcome everyone. Today, we're talking with Tom Osborn, co-founder and CEO of Shamiri Institute and Shamiri Health. Tom, we're excited to have you here with us.

Tom Osborn - Thanks so much for having me Todd and I'm a really big fan of the work that you're doing and just excited to be part of this conversation today.

Todd Manwaring - Thank you. Well, let's start off a little bit. People always ask us, How did people get into this? What was it that got your interest in mental health care and also why you started Shamiri in Kenya and give us kind of a bit of a path.

Tom Osborn - I was born and raised in a small sugarcane farm in rural Kenya. My parents are smallholder farmers and where I was born, sugarcane was the cash crop that everyone grew. But growing up the pressure was all about doing well in school because that was the only pathway, you know, towards, you know, leaving the village and kind of having a chance at fulfilling your dreams and aspirations, you know, so from a very early age, that pressure to do well in school and do well academically. 

And when I was in eighth grade  in Kenya, everyone does this national exam. And, you know, depending on how you score on this national exam, you then are admitted to different public schools with different types of ranking and rating. And when I did this exam, I was lucky that I was ranked first in the county I was coming from. And so I got admitted to this public secondary school in Nairobi, which is the capital, which is about an eight hours drive from my village. 

So that was the first time that I left the village and I came to Nairobi and I came to this really good public school, but which was also kind of still way more high pressure, because they were always chasing a 100% college transition rate. And so that was like the pressure in that system. And two things happened here that changed my trajectory.

So the first was with my mom. When I was just about to go to my last year of high school, my mom was diagnosed with respiratory tract infection as a result of using firewood to cook. And this changed my life because this was the first time I had this impetus to want to do something for her and something kind of like for the women like her who were using fire to cook and it was ruining their health. 

And that led me to found my first startup, which is a clean energy company. And what we were trying to do was to build more low cost cleaner fuel for low income households in villages and small towns. And so I did that when I was 18 and I did it for two years. It didn't work out as much as anticipated, but it was kind of a great learning experience and actually just like a great way of building my entrepreneurial ethos. 

Todd Manwaring - Right? And just to help us understand, 18, that would have been just after you finished secondary school. Is that right?

Tom Osborn - No, exactly. Yeah, that is right. Yeah. And the second thing which happened when I was in high school was I was, but at that time I had no idea that I was struggling personally with a lot of anxiety and depression, I think just coming from this kind of pressure cooker system and others around me in it. 

So in my junior year, one of my classmates actually committed suicide. But the way we were viewing it back then is this was just what life was. We were under this card and we just have to play with this card. And we were also pretty lucky that we could go to school, others didn't go to school. 

And so I didn't really think about these experiences from a mental health perspective until I was in college in the US and I had to take a psychology class, you know, just a sort of required class that I had to take. And, you know, for the first time I was able to review my own experiences and the experiences of those I was growing up with, you know, from this lens of mental health and that, you know, started to spark a curiosity that will eventually lead me down this path.

Todd Manwaring - Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense. And here in the United States, just like you're saying, with the pressure you felt in your secondary school, there's a lot of pressure on university campuses and many college students, US, Europe, other locations around the world are feeling huge amounts of anxiety, depression. And in many ways, the schools are struggling to keep up with how do we help?

And so, yeah, that's very interesting that, and then you're able to look back at secondary school and say, well, yeah, and part of the issue was that was obviously what we were experiencing. That's very interesting.

Tom Osborn - No, 100% and to your point that there are a lot of really new emerging stresses that young people, you know, are facing, just like in the last one or two decades, just like digital media, social media, and how that is informed and influenced mental health issues, you know, just like emerging worries and concerns that people are having about their futures, you know.

Like in Kenya, my parents' generation, if you went to college, you're pretty much assured of a middle class and above life. But now, you know, you can go to school and still be unemployed. So there's also just a lot of worries people are having, you know, about life trajectories, etc. And all of these are coming together to see what we've been seeing over the last 10, 20 years, which is this just increased prevalence rate of mental health problems amongst young people.

Todd Manwaring - And then you started then working on how could you meet some of that mental health care need while they're at Harvard. And it seemed like you were very interested from the beginning and bringing in evidence to show, is this working or not? Tell us a bit about that.

Tom Osborn - Yeah, so I was very lucky in that, the school was a very like research oriented university. And so most of my professors were also running research labs and research is a big part of their job. And so I joined this lab, it is like a lab for youth mental health. And what they were trying to do was to design interventions that were brief and scalable and they were targeting, you know, young people.

And so when I was at that lab, I was particularly drawn to two things. So the first was just this evidence, which is imagining that simpler interventions could have a large effect on people's mental health, right? So rather than always having to go for one-on-one therapy, you know, with a psychologist, interventions that target things like a sense of belonging or making values aligned, decisions on problem solving, could equally be as therapeutic. So that was one thing which really attracted me because it seemed to be quite scalable if it worked. 

And then the second thing, which also led me down this path of being an entrepreneur was there was this huge disconnect between research from an academia perspective and you know building and deploying interventions in the real world. So one unfortunate thing when I was working in the lab is that they will design these great studies, do these RCTs, and then publish a journal paper and they will move on to the next thing, right? 

And so that made me see this gap, between taking things from research and trying to build an organization that can be able to scale them. And just given my background before college as an entrepreneur, you know, my interest in eventually moving back to Kenya to work in this space, that felt like a really great space to work in, at the intersection of research and just real world scaling. 

And that really ended up forming a lot of like the ethos for the work that we were doing, you know, kind of at your merit, which is you do need evidence, you know, to begin with, and you need to get this, know, through rigorous randomized trials. But then you shouldn't be doing that in a silo. At the same time, you should be thinking about how can I deploy this in the real world and test your model within those parameters. 

And so we started in this research lab. And that's why we have the name Institute just really strongly on the ethos that you have to research, but you have to marry that research should also focus on implementation and iteration.

Todd Manwaring - Right, right, and really the iteration in between, we're learning this from the research and now we're going to iterate a bit in our intervention and really that cycle that keeps going. Tell us about maybe a typical student that you're working with in Kenya, that Shamiri's, you know, connected with. What does that look like for a student who might be struggling with anxiety or depression?

Tom Osborn - To better give some context to the question, I'll first briefly just talk about how our model works and then how we work with schools and how we work with students. 

So basically, our model is built on three ideas. So the first idea is what we call task shifting. And basically, what this means is you can train non-professionals to be able to deliver psychological interventions. And so because of task shifting, what we have built is a three-step care model where at the basis we train recent high school graduates, 18 to 22 years old on average, to lead group sessions in schools. 

And they are trained, recruited and supervised by the second level, who are semi-professionals. So they are folks who have some clinical background. So maybe they've been working as social workers or they have a bachelor's in psychology or counseling, but they still are not yet fully considered mental health providers. So they do the training and the supervision. And if there is an elevated case, they're going to be able to handle that. 

And then finally, at the top of the model, we work with a few psychologists and psychiatrists in the country. Basically, the idea of building a model that allows for both upward and downward referral, depending on the type of needs that the folks are presenting. 

And the second part of our model is there's emphasis on simple brief interventions that try to target overall functioning rather than reduce a mental health problem specifically. This includes simple things like I mentioned, sense of purpose, practicing gratitude, having a growth mindset, etc. And so the protocol that we deal with in the group sessions are 100 % focused on this. 

And then the last part is just working within communities. And that's why we work mostly in schools, because that's where most of the young people are. And we think this makes access to care, you know, more accessible, less stigmatizing, etc. And in fact, when you work in schools, you know, this is a universal program. So you don't need a mental health diagnosis to join.

And on average about 70% of the school population actually does sign up for the sessions. And we think that makes it just more low stigma and an easier entry point for people.

Todd Manwaring - Yeah, that would make a lot of sense because they see a lot of people. If I'm struggling, I'm seeing other people participate in this group activity that's going on. 

Tom Osborn - Yeah. And so with that in mind of how it works is if you are a student,  we will come to you in your school. You will sign up for the programming, which is a kind of an after school program between 3 to 5 P.M. You will be assigned to a group with between 6 to 15 other young people who are peers.

You'll go through at least four group sessions on this content, in between these sessions, you get an opportunity to practice the skills. If you have more elevated symptoms, you will then be referred up the triaging model, just depending on your needs.

But also more importantly, you know, from a cultural perspective in Kenya, suicidal attempts is still criminalized. And also if you're working within a school context, what we have found is traditionally most schools are risk averse, you know, so if they have a kid who us you know suicidal, their default is to have the kid take a leave of absence or leave the school, etc. 

And yeah, and so managing all of that as you were going, know, kind of going through that intervention, you know, was one of the most complex things we dealt with, know, at the very beginning.

But what is really exciting is when we see the impact of this work on the lives of young people. And so what we have found is that at least 80% of the folks that we work with who meet the clinical definition of depression and anxiety at baseline will not meet this after four weeks, so they will move from, for example, being depressed to not depressed. 

And we are also seeing improvement in academic grades, school climate, interpersonal relationships. And now that we've been doing this for like five years, we begin to see some of these human stories. 

I think one story which for me is the most powerful was in 2019, we were working in this all girl secondary school with this young girl who had really clinically elevated and suicidal depression. 

And so we ran the program for four weeks. The school semester ended. But three years later in 2023, when I went to visit one of the school sites that we were working on. I was when I saw the girl as one of our providers, now leading group sessions. And that just spoke to not just the effect that it had on her personally, but also just how consequential it was in her life that she, after graduating from high school, signed up to be one of the providers to give back in the similar way that the programming had helped her.

Todd Manwaring - Right. That is a great story. As you've been describing, there's a lot of focus on making sure your programs are effective, just like in this situation that you described with this girl, not wanting to just deliver something, but wanting to deliver and then follow up and to be able to determine, like you said, boy, people who go the four session program, 80% of them are no longer showing signs of anxiety and depression. 

What's really going on more deeply within the Institute and the health program that is part of that?

Tom Osborn - Yes. When we were starting Shamiri the thinking was to rescale. We needed to do a few things and do them well. So the first is we needed to do the program delivery or service delivery. So figure out how to run group sessions, work with schools, government, train providers, etc. 

The second is we needed to do research from two perspectives. One is what we are calling, we call our evidence engine. So we choose to just generate traditional hardcore research primarily through RCTs on the different interventions that we were doing. And then also the second on optimization. So we realized as you were scaling, we had to make trade-offs. So things like the size of the group, do you have 15 people or 10 people? The number of supervisors per provider. 

And we were really inspired by tech companies in the US because they're really good at doing this optimization, you know, through things like A-B tests and things like that. And we felt that there was something which was, you know, missing in this development space, which will be really crucial for us.

And the thought was more from a supply side. And so basically, here we were thinking about how do we get the next generation of providers? Even though we're working with lay-providers, we need folks to supervise them. And because of this, we need to also do a lot of work around both training and, second, also meaningfully employing providers so that people have a decent career path within the mental health space. 

And then lastly, was around our payer because right now we are still heavily subsidized by philanthropy, but we think at scale we need to get a mix of either government or parent-based contributions as well to make this sustainable.

So to reach scale, you can't just focus on program delivery. I think in our case, we need evidence, we need optimization. We need to start moving towards a more sustainable pair and especially now given all of the funding cuts, which also affected us. I think that has really increased the impetus to make our model cheap enough that governments can, you know pay for it.

We also need to train and also build tech, especially now with artificial intelligence, we are seeing possibilities for further reducing our costs from even simple things like improving how we triage, how we supervise, etc. 

So we are a program delivery company that does the mental health work. But as we will talk about later, kind of what we're trying to orient ourselves is to be more of like infrastructure enabler and building, you know, the core infrastructure for not just governments, but other doers and implementers in Kenya around the world to replicate our model. And we're realizing that we need to do this for things really well to build that infrastructure to be able to deploy this type of evidence-based mental health solutions at scale.

Todd Manwaring - Right. I love what you're mentioning. Yeah, let's touch on two things. First, I'd like to talk a bit more about the scale and how you're approaching that. And then we'll kind of end up with some of your vision of where this is heading, because I think that's important for our listeners to know.

We're very interested in groups that do the kind of efficacy work. You know, is this benefiting? And if it isn't, just like you're saying, well, we need to retrain people or we've got to figure out how to make the group smaller or that intervention will keep changing so that it becomes more effective for different groups of people. 

In the scale side, this is always exciting because I think some people think, well, you could do a quality program with just a few hundred people. But in your case, as you mentioned, you've been around for five years. COVID happened in the middle. But in 2024, you ended up reaching over 100,000 people in your system. And a lot of that, I understand, is because you have this direct connection into the schools, but you're also working with national entities as well as county entities within Kenya. So there's really, and I see this with a lot of groups, if scale is going to happen, there's got to be a connection with the government because that's the entity that touches everyone. 

Tell us a little bit about you know, what that's been like and, and, know, where you see that being a big strategic push.

Tom Osborn - No, I think that's a really great point. And how we think about scale, at least from Shamiri, is less so of numbers. We think the numbers are a great pointer. But we don't think that they fully capture scale. So how we think about scale is how can we get our idea and our model to reach its full potential of impact. And so when we think about it from that perspective, we realize that especially in Kenya and similar countries which are really young, the median age is 19 and 60% of the population is under the age of 24. And just given the high prevalence rates for mental health, we see that to be like in the millions, right? 

Todd Manwaring - Yeah, right.

Tom Osborn - And so when we are thinking about scale, we ask ourselves, how do we get there? And we have three options. The first option is obviously we do it alone, which is just not possible. 

The second other option is we work with other local organizations, which was what we had been doing until 2024. So we had been partnering with other nonprofits locally, we trained them on our model, and then they just replicated in the areas where they were working. 

And then the last is we work through the government, right? And so for us, that is now what is most interesting for a couple of reasons. So one is most of our nonprofit partners, especially just given the funding landscape, I've had a lot of like internal sustainability shocks. Right. And so then that made us realize that, okay, if you're trying to save a million or 10 million, depending purely on nonprofits to do that puts us at this disadvantage where they can't struggle with these shocks.

And so that's why we are really focusing a lot on the government now and focusing both on the education system as well as the health system. So for the education system, our goal is to embed this within the traditional care systems that we have in schools. And so we've been working with the Ministry of Education here in Kenya and we're really lucky that now we have partnerships with about 400 schools that we work in now, you know, year over year with regards to deploying the model, but also figuring out like referral pathways, recruiting students, trying to work with parents and teachers. 

And so that is already working for us. What we are really now trying to do is work with the Ministry of Health, both at the national level and the county level for two things. One is to start shifting some of the burden of implementing the model to them. So can, for example, county health officials be able to recruit, train and supervise lay providers? Can we tap into the referral systems that they have? What do we need to strengthen those kind of referral systems?

And this is crucial because it allows us to do the second thing, which is to guide the government to start paying, though initially through in-client support. So if we can leverage the workforce, it starts to reduce our costs. Our current costs are about seven to ten dollars per client per year. We want to get that to three to five dollars. And then this kind of like one part of it, right? And then also as we embed this, and we lower the cost to three to five dollars we think within the current government budget, there may be room for them to start being able to pay for this, right? But I think that's a pretty crucial part of our scaling strategy is moving from us doing everything to now starting to work closely with the government to start having them do some parts of the model and also starting to pay for parts of the model either directly or through in-kind. So that is how we are thinking of pushing to scale moving forward.

Todd Manwaring - Right? In fact, I've been to Kenya about four or five times you know, really one of the jewels of Eastern Africa, but still a place where just like in the U.S., you know, we struggle with who's going to be paying for healthcare, who's going to be providing that? What does that look like? So kudos for coming up with really a sense, I guess, what I'm hearing is, well, we wanna do this no matter what it is, the right way, get other people engaged and not be thinking as we're the only ones who can do it, but really, we can train people, people can participate. I mean, that's really a great message.

Tom Osborn - If you really think about it, like, consequential, meaningful, long-term impact only happens when your ideas caps the orbit of the originating organization and becomes just what people do. And for us, that is the goal, you know, and that means that we have to design in a way that over time, we move a lot of these things from being Shamiri dependent to just being, you know, what schools and what the government does.

Todd Manwaring - Right, right, kind of Shamiri supported less than delivering everything, right? 

Tom Osborn - Exactly

Todd Manwaring - You know, on your website, there's a couple of things where you mentioned we're trying to reach a million people by 2027. I know you've got pilot projects outside of the country and even recently did a pilot project here in the United States and Massachusetts. Tell us about what you see as that vision of really bringing this to more and more people outside of Kenya and bring this to other groups of people.

Tom Osborn - Yeah, that's a really good question. So how we think about it more broadly, and then I'll talk about how we think about it specifically, is we think that globally, traditional mental health systems are almost failing young people. You know, if you look at it, be it from the US or be it from Kenya, we have challenges around accessibility and affordability. You know, we don't have enough providers.

The cost of care is pretty expensive. And because of a lot of these new emerging stresses, mental health problems are only increasing. And so, at a high level, we think that we can and are showing a different approach that is embedded within communities that uses a lot of simple evidence-based interventions and that is low cost can work.

That this becomes a template that can be replicated around the world. And that's one of reasons why evidence generation is a big part of our strategy in helping both demonstrate and also just build these open access resources that people can use to replicate that. And so to get there, we have to at least show that we can do this effectively at a scale that matters. And that is why our hope is to get to a million people by 2027. Currently, we've served just slightly under 200,000. So the next 2026, 2027 are going to be big for us in terms of that scaling journey. 

But just to emphasize for us, it's not about the number. I think the number is a good strategic thing to hit, but it's more about demonstrating that you can do this at a substantial volume and scale that matters effectively with evidence and with actual impact. And because of this, you know, we are strengthening in Kenya. So right now we work in eight counties out of the 42 counties. So the hope is to, you know, expand our breadth amongst those counties that we don't work in over the next two years.

But then also starting to look at if this could be a template in other contexts, does it work and how do you go about modifying and making adaptations to help it work? And so we've been doing pilots, for example, in Ethiopia, South Africa, and Ghana, which have been really kind of informative. 

For example, in the context of Ethiopia, we are realizing that young people are presenting with a lot of more like trauma-based problems, especially because they had a war going on in 2020 and 2021. And so we need to do some adaptations to the type of interventions that we do. 

We did a pilot, as you mentioned, in Rochester, in Massachusetts. And then we realized that the nature of the school system in the US was so different that we have to make adaptations into how we recruit our lay providers. So for example, in Kenya, you work with high school graduates in the US, we realize it's actually easier to work with university students and have this be the providers who are going into high schools. And so these ongoing pilots are just like lessons for us.

But one thing just to mention is all of them are done in partnership with, you know, local organizations because eventually, you know, past this pilot, you we will want to just support them to take this on run with it because, you know, I went to school in Massachusetts, but I'm obviously not from Massachusetts. And I say I'm not the best person to figure out how to navigate the school system, the health system and all kinds of all of the local dynamics.

Todd Manwaring - Right. Yeah, all those context pieces. Well, that's exciting. So really trying to figure out how to, like you say, grow this within Kenya, as well as bring this to other parts of the world to help achieve that. 

Maybe lastly, you know, what kind of help could you use? You mentioned monetarily, there's always a need, and you mentioned just because of some of the funding cuts. You can always utilize extra funds to help with your growth. Are there other areas where people could provide some assistance or that you're looking for connections or what would that be?

Tom Osborn - That's a really great question. A few things. The one which you've mentioned is our model is super cost effective. It only cost us right now, you know, $7 per student. And so if we wanted to reach a million kids, we'd only need 7 million, which sounds like a lot, but from a philanthropy perspective, you know, isn't that much. And so we're trying to raise money towards that. 

But then a few other things. So as I mentioned, we're kind of in this process of refiguring out how to design and move towards scale. And so we need help in one of four buckets. 

So the first is expertise and helping us think about our model and see how we can simplify it, like figure out what the core essential ingredients are and figure out how to effectively train especially governments, because what we're realizing is the government needs things to be really simple for them to be able to replicate and execute. And so that's one thing we're looking at. 

Tech, so trying to figure out how to design tech systems that can help us with the simplification. So from quality control, just backend operations, etc. We think a lot of that can be tech enabled. 

Communications and we're trying to tell this story, you know, more bodily, more impactfully, not just about the impact that we're doing, but also like the research and the evidence, you know, we have, and that's why I'm really grateful to be on this podcast because it gives us, you like just another opportunity to tell this story

And then finally, moving towards more sustainability. If we were to get government systems to start paying for this, we're trying to figure out what the price points are. Do we have to do some work around policy and lobbying, etc? And we do need all of these different pieces to come together to allow us to get to scale.

Todd Manwaring - Yeah, that's awesome and impressive. Well, we're grateful that you've been here with us today and we do. We want to help promote your story, help people see this opportunity. Our listeners can always go to our website at fiercephilanthropy.org and donate. 100% of those donations flow directly to the groups that we share like Shamiri and I hope that we find many people that would be interested in what you're doing and your approach. 

I'm excited about the evidence that you've been able to tie into this completely. That's what we're looking for in great organizations. So kudos for doing that and helping to change the world. It was great meeting you, Tom.

Tom Osborn - Thank you so much Todd, I really enjoyed this conversation and looking forward to staying in touch.

Jaxson Thomas - This is your co-host Jaxson Thomas with this month's Impact Opportunity. You just heard from Tom Osborn, founder and CEO of Shamiri, a nonprofit addressing a key problem in Kenya.

Let's dive deeper into that problem. One in three young people worldwide struggle with anxiety or depression, and in East Africa, fewer than one in 10 ever receive care. Old school mental health systems, even when they're available, rely on specialists and infrastructure that simply don't exist everywhere. And these systems can often be very expensive.

Shamiri is tackling Kenya's youth mental health crisis by starting where the need is greatest in schools and communities and by removing the biggest barriers to care: shortage of clinicians, high cost, and stigma.

Instead of relying on a small number of specialists or importing a one-size-fits-all model, Shamiri trains young adults from the same communities to deliver proven, culturally grounded mental health support at scale. 

Here's how it works. The first step is near-peer delivery, they call “fellows”, between the ages of 18 and 24, to lead brief group-based mental health sessions in schools.

The curriculum they're teaching is evidence-based. The fellows use structured research-backed interventions, focused on strengths like gratitude, growth mindset, and problem solving, tools that reduce depression and anxiety and build resilience.

If a student needs more help, Shamiri has a clear pathway to step them up to more advanced care, including supervision from clinicians and referral systems.

Finally, what gives Shamiri a leg up is their digital systems help coordinate sessions, monitor fidelity, and track student progress so the program stays consistent and effective across different regions, counties, and communities.

What's the net result? Mental health care becomes more accessible, normal, and scalable, reaching thousands of youth who otherwise wouldn't receive any support at all. They are filling a massive gap in supporting the youth mental health crisis in Kenya.

Okay, so that's how it works. What's the impact of this program? The results are super clear and compelling.

Shamiri is extremely focused on evidence-backed programs. They're committed to academic research that proves that what they're doing is actually making a difference. This often comes in the form of RCTs, or randomized controlled trials. In a large RCT that they conducted, reductions in depression and anxiety were sustained up to seven months post-intervention, with both academic and social gains too for the participants.

Their single session digital pilot reduced depressive symptoms with an effect size surpassing many traditional psychotherapies. They've now served over 200,000 youth with 50,000 served in 2025 alone and with a goal to continue to grow to reach 1 million youth by 2027.

If this mission resonates with you or your clients, there's a clear way to take action. Shamiri Institute is a 501(c)(3) public charity and is eligible for tax deduction donations directly on their website or through DAFs like UI Charitable.

You can support their scale up efforts, help recruit and train more fellows, and bring mental health access to youth who previously had none.

If you're interested in supporting Shamiri, visit shamiri.co. Or you can email us at podcast@fiercephilanthropy.org to learn how your donor advised fund can support Shamiri's work.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Impact Innovations Podcast brought to you by Fierce Philanthropy. We hope today's conversation inspires you to approach philanthropy with greater intention, strategy, and effectiveness in a way that you can feel confident that your efforts are truly making a difference. Please subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and share this with others you know who are interested in finding great organizations to support.

All of this helps our podcast grow.

To continue the conversation, or if you have questions about your grant making, impact investing, or impact measurement, get in touch with us by emailing us at podcast@fiercephilanthropy.org.

Thanks, and we'll see you next time.

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