The Inner Foundation is committed to empowering the mental well-being of emerging adults, and we see the Next in Mind incubator as a hope-driven response to uplift this important, but all too often overlooked group. By leveraging proven, ready-to-scale solutions and actively involving the target group in evaluating what works, we think that this collaborative effort holds major potential in revolutionizing the Nordic support system. We’re convinced that we by bringing together emerging adults, entrepreneurs, investors, and sectors can strengthen the ecosystem to collectively drive impactful change for the well-being of emerging adults.
Reach for Change, The Inner Foundation, and the Tim Bergling Foundation, along with several Nordic partners have joined forces to empower social entrepreneurs with innovative solutions to flourish, to make mental health support more accessible and effective for emerging adults. This initiative will initially support 20 social entrepreneurs in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark through financing, business development support, and networking opportunities to develop their organizations. In addition to the direct support, the initiative will actively engage in advocacy work to map the support system for emerging adults, identify gaps and opportunities, and promote cross-sector collaborations.
The entrepreneurs have been selected for their proven impact of helping emerging adults increase their resilience to mental illness. Additionally, all organizations demonstrate great potential to scale their operations with the right support.
We are very excited about this program as we will be able to provide first-class support to these entrepreneurs. We have a record number of unique pro-bono partners who are partnering with us to provide both group and individual support for our entrepreneurs. After going through more than 150 strong applications we are convinced that there are solutions that can turn the negative trends of increasing mental illness for emerging adults around. With this diverse set of committed partners who have expertise in relevant fields from leadership to impact scaling, we are ready to prepare these 20 remarkable social entrepreneurs to scale their solutions.
Until 2025, the entrepreneurs will receive in-depth business development support to prepare their mental health solutions for scaling. Additionally, each entrepreneur receives 300,000 SEK as a funding contribution. Through the incubator, a broad Nordic network is opened up for the entrepreneurs, which is an important part of the opportunity to grow their organizations.
Alone is not strong, and to address major societal issues such as emerging adults' mental health and access to support, we need to shift from a reactive approach to concrete proactive actions and transformative efforts across society. I see investing in social entrepreneurs as modern and logical because we offer them opportunities to scale up their operations, where they are already thinking proactively without historical burdens or are being organizations that need fundamental changes. We will follow these entrepreneurs with great interest and a long-term perspective.
Here are the 20 selected social entrepreneurs:
1. Boblberg, Denmark
Boblberg offers a safe and inclusive platform and app where people find and build new supportive communities and enhance their social skills and networks based on their interests.
2. Healper, Denmark
Matching service between clients and therapists to support emerging adults to get the right certified mental health counselor, while for therapists they offer an administration system to enable them to provide the world's best therapy.
3. MinPlan International, Denmark
Minplan enhances self-awareness, encourages proactive mental health approaches, and fosters support from family and healthcare, ultimately assisting in preventing suicidal thoughts.
4. My Mental Wellbeing, Denmark
Educate, train, and equip emerging adults with the necessary knowledge, science-based techniques and practical tools to improve their mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing so that they can lead a fulfilled personal and professional lives.
5. Blå Kors Stavanger, Norway
In 2020 Blå Kors Norge launched an initiative in Stavanger to address the increasing issues of loneliness and exclusion. The initiative, Steg for Steg Stavanger, focuses on community participation, education, and employment to combat social exclusion.
6. Girku SOS, Norway
A helpline-service driven by volunteers for the population in Sapmi.
7. Headspace/Mental Helse, Norway
Headspace is a place where young people count and have a voice. There is no cost involved, anonymity for those who prefer that and dialogue with trained volunteers - where no problem is too small or too big to be put on the table.
8. Norse Feedback, Norway
Turning data into wisdom, and wisdom into action by measuring mental health and showing systems how to manage it.
9. Young Happy Minds, Norway
Together with SeeYouAI, a pioneer in ethical, human-centered AI-solutions, they have teamed up to develop a global, AI-enhanced mental health support platform for young people.
10. Kukunori (The central association of Culture and Wellbeing), Finland
The co-founder Markus Raivio has designed a new approach to mental healthcare that enables those with severe mental health challenges such as psychosis, personality disorders, and severe depression to focus on skill sharing and co-creation in the arts to build self-confidence, resilience, and community.
11. MARKED with purpose, Finland
MARKED is a Finnish 12-step program, accompanied with a mobile app, that empowers 18-25-year-old students through experiential learning, increasing self-awareness and emotional intelligence for a profound sense of purpose and the realization of their full potential.
12. Sekasin (MIELI Mental Health Finland), Finland
A national chat service that supports mental wellbeing and helps cope with mental health problems. The chat is targeted to 12-29 year old young people and it is free of charge, anonymous and confidential with extensive opening hours.
13. We Encourage Oy Ltd, Finland
We Encourage offer a conversational chatbot and a knowledge base with essential and valuable resources, to those experiencing or affected by domestic violence.
14. Healthy Women Idrotts- och Kulturförening, Sweden
Healthy Women provides a safe network for women aged 13-30 by offering physical and social activities. We believe that knowledge, a sense of belonging and a meaningful leisure time is key to a physical and mental well being.
15. Insight Gap, Sweden
Have developed an award-winning digital education that is quick, easy to distribute and effective in making mental health easier to understand. By reaching the target group with a customized version of the education they increase awareness and knowledge, fight stigma and strengthen emerging adults' resilience against mental illness.
16. Right by Me, Sweden
Right By Me amplifies the voices of the youth and aims to contribute to a shift in the perception of young people with foreign backgrounds – towards a view of youth with the power to drive change both for themselves and for society at large. Right By Me’s programs focus on physical and mental health, employment readiness and youth leadership.
17. Stiftelsen 1825, Sweden
Offer psychotherapy and psychosocial support to emerging adults aged 18-25 in Sweden, customized to their individual needs.
18. Stiftelsen Fryshuset - ICbility, Sweden
The ICbility program is a collaboration between Fryshuset, University of Cambridge and Umeå University that helps young adults to navigate in an increasingly complex world, find adaptive ways to work out differences and disagreements through focusing on how others think rather than what, and to increase their capabilities for better complex thinking through improved self-regulation, critical thinking, problem-solving and conflict handling.
19. Tilia, Sweden
Tilia is a non-profit organization working for the mental health of young adults. The organization was founded in 2012 and operates, among other things, a support chat open every evening, all year round.
20. Tjejzonen, Sweden
Tjejzonen is Sweden's largest support organization for girls.The young women are offered a service entailing being listened to by a fellow volunteering who has undergone training in how to best conduct a coaching conversation based on a researched methodology.
