Elephant coming out of the Dark was established as a result of the Elephant in the Room, a youth-led mental health campaign. This program highlighted key areas for change for young people in terms of mental health provision. It established key asks which the Elephant Coming Out of the Dark program continues to lobby and campaign on:
- Support the Creation of a youth-led mental health TV/Radio campaign challenging the culture of silence and negative stigma
- Work with young people to develop a positive language mental health dictionary, to be used as part of the mental health curriculum programme
- Engage with young people to create and fund a safe digital platform to receive mental health information
- Create a compulsory curriculum program for all schools and colleges on mental health and well-being
- Wellbeing training for all teachers, school support workers, youth
Elephant coming out of the Dark has also reached over 400 young people across NI impacting positively on their wellbeing. We have worked closely with our partners Youth Action NI, The Bytes Project and RCity. We are grateful to work with each of these organizations in the delivery of such an important piece of work.
2022 was a very uplifting year, offering a range of opportunities to young people including members of Elephant coming out of the Dark Youth Steering group presenting to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in Geneva, Switzerland. Furthermore, we have developed East-West links to shout louder and collaborate with other organisations across the UK and Ireland on Youth Mental Health. This has included a major youth-led summit in Sheffield with youth activists from The Warren (Hull) Comics Youth (Liverpool), and Element Society (Sheffield).
