🌍 Global expansion

Project:IGYB International

Adolescent mental health is a global crisis. Our peer-led model is built to travel. We are partnering with student leaders, schools, and local mental-health organizations to bring Project:IGYB to communities beyond the United States.

Our case for going global

Stigma does not stop at a border.

One in seven adolescents worldwide lives with a diagnosable mental health condition. Three quarters of lifetime mental illness emerges before age 25. Access to youth-friendly support remains uneven across countries, languages, and income brackets.

The Project:IGYB model is intentionally lightweight: it travels in a backpack. A trained student, a confidentiality pledge, a private place to talk. That portability is the point. With strong local partners, the same model can take root anywhere students are quietly carrying too much.

1 in 7
adolescents worldwide live with a diagnosable mental health condition.
SOURCE: WHO, 2024
Phase one expansion

Where we are headed first

Two countries, four regions, deliberately chosen for strong student networks, urgent youth mental-health need, and partners on the ground who share our values.

Flag of India

India

Phase 1, in planning

In partnership with school networks across northern India, we are seeding peer-counseling chapters in three states where student stress, academic pressure, and stigma intersect with rapidly growing mental-health awareness.

Haryana Delhi (NCR) Punjab

Approach: train cohorts of student leaders, partner with local school counselors and NGOs, deliver peer sessions in English, Hindi, and Punjabi.

Flag of Canada

Canada

Phase 1, in planning

Canada is the natural first step beyond the United States: shared language, well-developed student-led activism, and an active provincial conversation on youth mental health.

Ontario

Approach: launch in Ontario high schools, build the Canadian counselor training pipeline with Canadian clinical advisors, deliver sessions in English and French.

Our principles

How a Project:IGYB chapter travels.

1. Local first

Every new region is led by students from that region, with cultural and linguistic context that we cannot import. We follow, then support.

2. Schools as anchors

We partner with at least one school or local NGO before launch. Real institutional support is the difference between a movement and a moment.

3. Clinical guardrails

Every international chapter pairs with at least one licensed mental health professional locally for ongoing supervision, crisis pathways, and warm referrals.

4. Open playbook

Training materials, crisis protocols, branding, and translation guides are open to chapter leaders, not buried in licensing or paywalls.

Partner with us

Bring Project:IGYB to your community.

A short form for schools, NGOs, student leaders, or clinicians anywhere in the world who want to build a Project:IGYB chapter or partner on programming.

A few sentences on the students you serve, the mental-health challenges you see, and what a partnership would unlock.

We respond personally within a few days. If timing is tight, email us directly at projectigyb@gmail.com.