Share to Inspire

Inspiration

Recently, the Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe released a report about mental health in our nation. From the report, there has been a steady increase in suicidal cases, family conflicts, murder cases among others. This has been due to increase in mental health disorders such as depression, anxiety and substance abuse among the people. These have been my greatest Inspiration to start Share to Inspire since I wanted to come up with a unique program which can help in curbing these challenges by motivating and giving people hope despite the hard challenges they encounter in life.

What it does

Share to Inspire creates a platform for people to share stories and and encounters as mentioned earlier. The program entails creation of a website and development of a mobile app. Through the app or the website, people will be able to create their own blog pages where they can type these stories and share. Due to privacy issues, the blog pages will have an option for people to do everything anonymously. The stories will then be available in the website and a snippet will be shared to "Share to Inspire" social media platforms hence guiding more people to visit the website and read the whole story or encounter. The program will also consist of virtual social talks through social media, webinars, podcasts and other medial platforms.Through these social talks, people will have a chance to get live experience as some of the people share their motivational stories. The virtual talks will also consist of popular people in different fields of career who will also share about their challenges and success story hence this will help put more impact on the program. Once the Covid-19 is fully controlled, social talks shall be held physically in different locations hence increasing the engagement level among people. Finally, the program will open a platform for those people who feel that they need to open up in order to get help by being connected with personal mentors and counselors who they can privately talk to and share their challenges.

How I built it

I started building my project by coming up with a segment under my foundation, Bariki Foundation, which is a youth charity group I started in April Last year. Being a general charity group, I wanted to do something specific which will help in identifying the foundation better. From my research on the most common and rising challenges facing our nation, I settled on Mental Health disorders and hence decided to come up with Share to Inspire in order to help in curbing the menace which has really affected many people.

Challenges I ran into

Setting up a fully functional website and development of an app have been my greatest challenges since they are a bit expensive. I also enough capital to acquire equipment such as cameras, microphones among others that can be used in virtual talks such podcasts.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

So far I have been able to reach out to many people both popular and unpopular and many are willing to open up and help in giving someone hope but sharing what they have encountered in life. In fact, they are just waiting for the whole program to be ready. Another achievement is that due to my whole Idea, one person has volunteered to a web design for the program and that has really motivated me.

What I learned

I learned that despite many assumptions about things not working out, It is really important to try what you think is important even if you don't know about tomorrow. I also learned that we should never assume that people are okay especially when they seem happy or contented. Many people nurse many bruises and problems behind the beautiful smiles. It is always important to reach out to people.

What's next for Share to Inspire

My dream is to see Share to Inspire mentor and motivate many people out there who had lost hope and were at the elm of giving up. I also look forward to the program becoming the biggest mental health problem solver in our nation.