A Social Justice Organization

The Mental Wellness Initiative (MWI) was founded in April 2020, in response to Covid-19’s impact on South Africa during the first wave of the pandemic. Several organisations that service the mental health and wellness space, came together to respond to the need. These organisations became the founding members of Mental Wellness Initiative. These include Ellipse Institute for Social Impact, Centre of the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, Thinklink, Camber Coaching and Dinaledi Coaching. 

Post COVID-19, MWI has evolved into a network organisation whose main goal is to position mental wellness as a priority component of the social development agenda in South Africa. This vision was adopted after realising that the impact of the pandemic simply exposed a pre-existing collective trauma our nation suffers, which is carried from the apartheid legacy and we cannot address the trauma without acknowledging our historical past. This cumulative effect, for a long time, has been left unaddressed, and has been undermining the fabric of our society. If this trend continues, it will create long term damage on the collective psyche of our nation. 

Mental wellness is at the core of resilience and recovery, focused on reducing inequality, vulnerability, and fragility. It is against this backdrop, that MWI was created to work collaboratively, with a network of aligned and complimentary organisations to craft and deliver mental wellness interventions at both depth and scale throughout South Africa.

Our approach to mental wellness incorporates responses at all strata of society and includes short term crisis responses as well as driving longer term systemic change.