Looking Back on Impact in 2025: Rise’s Companionship Amid Psychological Challenges Facing Young Changemakers

I am a Fellowship Program Manager at Rise. My work involves accompanying and supporting Fellows participating in the Fellowship program. In 2025, I managed projects related to community mental health and capacity building for students. This piece is a reflection on my 2025 Fellowship journey.

Throughout my hands on work and close accompaniment of many young leaders, I had the opportunity to deeply observe the psychological challenges they faced. From these experiences, the question that troubled me most was not “How can we make them stronger?” but rather: “Why are more and more young people experiencing mental health challenges in a context where opportunities for learning, connection, and access to information are increasingly abundant?”

Naming the Emotions

A common thread I frequently encountered was young people’s difficulty in naming and sharing their own emotions. Many shared that they felt prolonged anxiety, exhaustion, or emptiness, yet did not dare to acknowledge it for fear of being judged as weak or insufficiently resilient. In an environment where success, happiness, and positivity are constantly emphasized—especially through social media—being “not okay” gradually becomes unacceptable. As a result, mental health challenges do not disappear; instead, they are pushed deeper inside, waiting until they exceed an individual’s capacity to cope.

Adaptability and Prioritizing Real Community Needs

In the early stages of implementing activities, I initially believed that online-based support models would be an appropriate and resource-efficient solution. However, working directly with participants revealed that online knowledge and connections were not enough. Many young people needed more—a space that felt truly safe to be heard, the presence of real human connection, and a small community they could remain part of over time. Recognizing this led to important shifts in approach. Rather than trying to maintain unsuitable models, my collaborators and I paused, reassessed and listened to feedback in order to experiment with more intimate and flexible forms of engagement. From a leadership perspective, this marked a critical turning point: Leadership is not about protecting the original plan, but about the ability to adapt and place the community’s real needs first.

Recognizing Challenges

A key factor that enabled me to adapt was the way Rise accompanied Fellows throughout the Fellowship journey. Instead of applying pressure to “deliver exactly as planned,” Rise encouraged reflection, reassessment, and learning from what did not work. This support came not only in the form of resources, but also through its approach—trusting Fellows’ capacity for self-evaluation, creating space for experimentation and mistakes, and encouraging honesty in acknowledging challenges. This gave me an essential sense of reassurance: I did not have to prove that everything was successful; I was allowed to learn in order to do better.

Holistic Support and Ongoing Accompaniment

Beyond technical support, the consistent accompaniment from the Program Manager and the Rise team—through regular check-ins, gatherings, and Fellow connections—helped me feel that I was not working alone. These spaces were not solely about progress or outcomes; they also allowed for sharing personal difficulties, fatigue, and uncertainties that arise when working with communities. From this experience, I came to recognize an important principle in mental health work: To build safe spaces for young people, those who lead must first be supported themselves.

Doing It Right, Going Deep, and Doing It Together

Thanks to Rise’s human-centered Fellowship design, this journey extended beyond individual activities to create deeper change: strengthening adaptive leadership capacity, fostering a community-building mindset rather than fragmented individual support, and laying the groundwork for initiatives to continue beyond the Fellowship. These outcomes reinforced my belief that sustainable social impact does not come from “doing more,” but from doing the right things, going deep, and doing them together.

After the Fellowship, I no longer ask why young people are “more fragile,” but instead ask: “Have we created enough safe spaces for them to truly be themselves?” For me, Rise’s companionship demonstrates that when social practitioners are trusted, supported in the right ways, and encouraged to learn, they will have the capacity and patience to build more humane communities—where mental health is no longer something to hide, but something cared for naturally and openly.

Team Rise.