“Like a parent leaving a child” is how one senior mental health professional expressed his sadness of the end of Voluntary Service Overseas’s (VSO) Mental Health Programme in Sri Lanka. Today is 28 February 2013, and the room I am sitting in is full with mental health policymakers, professionals, service users, and us, a group... Find out more
Blog
The Young Foundation welcomes contributions from many sectors and standpoints - views expressed here are not necessarily held by The Young Foundation.
Ideas, as well as people, now move more freely. We have put new models, drawn from other classes and other parts of the world, before the local people, creating new aspirations and new ideas.Michael Young and Peter Willmott.
Family and Kinship in East London, 1957
Bringing Positive Psychology to the Streets of Jaffna
Armed with ten thousand postcards with happy smiling faces printed on them, a team of counsellors, psychosocial workers and I are hitting the streets of the Jaffna, Sri Lanka on a busy Wednesday morning. Our aim is to raise awareness about positive mental health and wellbeing. Today is World Mental Health Day, 10 October 2012, an... Find out more
Let’s go fly a kite
The skies above Galle Face Green, Colombo were full of handmade multi-coloured kites. Nothing unusual in this sight, as a long standing tradition and favourite pastime for families to come and spend hours flying their kites, eating ice cream, and walking along the beach at weekends. But this day is slightly different. The day is... Find out more
Say Cheese Please!
It’s two in the afternoon on Poya Day or Full Moon Day in Sri Lanka, thirty one degree heat, and I am surrounded by children’s laughter and constant chatter. We are circling the Nallur Kandaswamy Kovil, one of the most significant Hindu temples in the Jaffna district, studiously taking photos of the things we think... Find out more