THE SHM FOUNDATION
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Mission Statement
We are committed to developing and funding projects with the potential to drive long lasting positive social change. We design and seek effective and sustainable solutions in the area of health; the arts; and education.
About This Cause
The SHM Foundation was founded in October 2008, in London, by two friends and business partners, Professor Henrietta Moore and Professor Maurice Biriotti. The SHM Foundation works globally to bring about positive social change through projects in the areas of mental health; the arts; and education. It uses knowledge from the humanities and social sciences to understand human motivation, and draws on academic disciplines, from philosophy to anthropology, to address social challenges. We are committed to developing and funding projects with the potential to drive long lasting positive social change. We do both, fund our initiatives and also seek funds in partnership with other organisations. Being a foundation arm of the private company, a London based consultancy called SHM Productions, it gives us a great advantage and it ensures our sustainability and financial stability. We have a global interdisciplinary team of 13 with backgrounds in mental health, research, business, education, design, communications and the arts. Ember (SHM Foundation’s flagship mental health project) currently provides mentorship and funds to 20 community-based mental health organisations in 13 countries (204 staff supporting 81,200 people with psychosocial disabilities in low-resource settings) to provide them with the visibility and resources they need to sustain and grow. Moreover, we regularly engage our network of 350+ community-based MH organizations around the world to research the challenges and best practices of funding mechanisms for such initiatives. We then share findings and insights with an audience of 4.000 people that includes practitioners, academia, service users, and funders in order to contribute to the future shape of the global mental health ecosystem. With 13% of the world’s population affected by mental health or substance abuse disorders, meeting global mental health needs is an immense challenge. We believe addressing this crisis does not lie in identifying a few silver bullet solutions, but rather in nourishing a diverse ecosystem of care that grows from within communities. Given that 3 out of 4 people with mental health conditions live in low- and middle-income countries, responsive, local organisations in low- resource settings play an essential role in that ecosystem – a critical force in the effort to address the mental health care gap. There is a huge amount of innovation and energy at the grassroots of global mental health and these locally-led organisations often have superpowers that large, institutional, international and/or research organisations don’t always have, including deeply understanding the specific context, often through lived experience; being embedded within local communities; and having the ability to overcome barriers to reaching people, such as stigma. The problem is, they don’t get the visibility and resources they need to sustain and grow. While the current funding system works well for some types of organisations – those that are large, professionalised, research-based or institutional – it does not suit the needs of community-based initiatives – those that are small, localised, user-led or volunteer-driven. Sustaining, replicating and scaling local organisations requires tailored support designed for their needs. We created Ember to fill this gap, by providing mentorship and funding to excellent local mental health initiatives in low-resource settings so that they can grow and thrive by following three steps: 1. We select a diverse cohort of excellent community-based organisations through a global call out and using a diagnostic tool called the Ember Health Check. 2. We provide a 12-month package of in-kind support tailored to each organisation’s needs, wellbeing support, and networking opportunities. 3. We invest in a number of initiatives, looking at where our funding can make the biggest difference, while we keep providing wellbeing support and visibility opportunities to these initiatives for an additional 12 months. Over the last three years we have incrementally piloted and refined the Ember model. The overarching impact of these outcomes in the long-term is that the initiatives who partner with Ember are more able to sustain their important work; to scale it up or replicate it in line with their ambitions; and innovate their models to address new needs. All of this means that they reach more people with psychosocial disabilities and have a bigger and more sustained impact in the diverse dimensions of mental health in which they are operating, so that everyone can access the help they need, where they are, in ways that work for them.