bold idea
Break cycles of poverty and unemployment in violence-affected communities in Somalia and Kenya by integrating trauma-informed curriculum and mental health support into economic opportunity programs for local youth.
organization overview
In conflict zones, billions are spent training young people who never finish school due to unaddressed trauma carried into the classroom. Iftin Global has helped build a solution with its two products, Heal 2 Work and Heal 2 Learn, which embed mental health and readiness skills directly inside existing schools and workforce programs across East Africa, with delivery by existing teachers and instructors, not clinical specialists. Several thousand youth across Somalia, where the program was first launched, and Kenya have completed the model. Iftin’s vision is for every education and training program in a conflict-affected country to include healing as a standard.
Personal Bio
After fleeing Somalia at age nine, Mohamed Ali Diini grew up and established a law career in America—before deciding to return. In Mogadishu, he built job programs for young people and discovered why youth continued to fail to thrive. Young people were dropping out of school, saving wages to pay smugglers, and were unable to hold a job or sit through a class. The barrier was not skills, but the invisible damage of decades of war — something Mohamed recognized because he carried it himself. He founded Iftin Global to build mental health support embedded inside the schools and training programs that already existed, in a country that had almost no mental health infrastructure. Mohamed coined the concept of the “Trauma Tax” to describe the hidden economic cost that unhealed trauma imposes on communities, workforces, and entire economies. His work has been featured in The New York Times, TIME, the BBC, and The Guardian. Viewership for his TED Talk has exceeded one million.
-
Organization Structure ?
An organization can be structured as a nonprofit, for-profit, or hybrid (a structure that incorporates both nonprofit and for-profit elements).