As our regular readers will know, Gede Foundation recently trained 20 champions for the Time to Change Global Pilot programme. On Saturday, September 14th, 2019, the Foundation held its very first social contact event.
A social contact event is an event where people (trained champions) with “lived mental health” experience have one-on-one conversations with people without lived mental health about their own experiences.
The event was held at Jabi Lake, Abuja and started at around 10am. The champions were in high spirits as the people encountered were mostly positive and curious to learn more. This made the champions more willing to talk to people about their own experiences. Our partners from Christian Blind Mission (CBM) were present for the first event. There was also a lot of support from Time to Change Global (TTCG).
Bitrus and Miracle
Our regular readers will recall that TTCG has been using this approach for 12 years and they have seen that it helps in stigma reduction towards people with mental health problems.
Overall, Gede's Founder, Dr Jennifer Douglas- Abubakar, Board of Directors, partners, champions and Staff members were very happy with the first event.
Please visit the blog regularly for more updates. Our second social contact event will be on World Mental Health Day - October 10th, 2019. If you would like to be a part of it, please visit Gede’s Twitter and Facebook for regular updates!