Daraja Africa Network

What happens after you prepare your dearest child for back-to-school, take time off work to drop them and say ‘Soma kwa bidii! Tuonane half-term! Call if you need anything,’ right before hugging them goodbye and turning to return to the grind, hoping and praying that the gods preserve your reason for working in the first place?

I’ll indulge you.

They attempt to settle into the rhythm of school. The words of inspiration they collected while home and deposited in a bank in their hearts make for enough withdrawals, but only for a few days. When the pressures of school, youth, relationships and everything else they don’t talk to you about start to stack, they have two options available to them.

They either speak to someone or else struggle alone.

Daraja Africa NetworkThe problem with option A is that the ‘someone to talk to’ is either the Guidance and Counselling Teacher, who is a teacher first and a counsellor second, or a peer. The issue with the first someone is that even if they weren’t already overwhelmed with classes, exams, schemes of work and expectations of a principal already under pressure, they are expected to serve a student population of over a thousand. That ratio of 1:1000 is, needless to say, absurdly burdensome. That is the mental health burden.

Now, the peer. It will likely be a bedmate, classmate or a friend they walk to lunch with. The issue here is these first responders lack the necessary tools to sufficiently support their struggling friend, regardless of how much they may want to. Passion is rarely ever the same as capacity, after all.

More often than not, your ‘bundle of joy’ will struggle alone.

This is why Daraja Africa Network exists. ‘Daraja’ is a Swahili word meaning bridge. As a youth-led mental health organization, we work tirelessly everyday towards bridging the mental healthcare access gap among young people.

With our expert counselling psychologist Dr Sheila Ngumi-Mbugua, we developed a six-week curriculum to equip the students with practical skills and coping tools. Our pilot at Limuru Girls’ High School with 64 peer counsellors and 12 contact hours was overwhelmingly successful. Our culmination event, Daraja Fest, reached over 2000 students, breaking the stigma around mental health and making them aware of the resource that had been made available to them.

Reports reaching our desk are that there is a general shift in the mental health outlook in the school. Instead of withdrawing, more students are seeking help from their peers and the peers are ready. The task-shifting model is proving successful and where previously, students withdrew when burdened, they are now opening up and making steps towards their recovery.

Our debut at the Alliance High School at their Centenary Medical Camp was a success, reaching over 300 boys in a single afternoon. All these experiences over four months prove that high school students require more attention with regards to mental healthcare. Time has come for a radical shift towards adolescent mental health and the necessary interventions.

Thus, Daraja is gearing up to go bigger and better in 2027. We aim to reach over 20,000 students across 8 schools in Kenya.

We are hosting our Inaugural Annual Fundraiser Gala at Emara-Ole Sereni on the 5^th of December, 2026 to raise funds for our 2027 programmes.

The Platform has already secured its table. You can, too! Reach out to us via email at darajaafrica26@gmail.com or Whatsapp at +254748047581 to secure your seat and table in support of this noble cause run by passionate law students.

Our founder, Iteyo Khaisia Abigael, is a budding law student at the University of Nairobi whose passions lie squarely in social justice, governance, youth empowerment and mental health advocacy. She writes for The Platform and other leading law journals. She believes lawyers, just like the law, are living and breathing beings whose impact must be felt beyond the courtroom. What better way to start than by supporting an initiative right at the heart of impacting real lives?

Cheers!