Children's Mental Health and Well-Being Platform

We seek to address the gap in children's mental health and well-being resources accessibility through our informative, evidence-based, and scalable training platform which brings leading mental health professionals into every home, classroom, and crisis point across the nation and the world. 

There is a children's mental health crisis in the United States, which has only gotten worse since COVID-19. Prior to COVID-19, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data found 1 in 5 children had a mental disorder, but only about 20% of those children received care from a mental health provider.  In the US, up to 80% of children who can benefit from professional mental health support currently lack the finances to afford one; or do not have access to professional care due to physical proximity. This situation has been exacerbated over the last two years, worsening the mental health accessibility gap. 

Post pandemic statistics of children with mental health issues have seen an increase, with 71% of parents saying the pandemic had taken a toll on their child’s mental health. From March 2020 to October 2020, mental health-related emergency department visits increased 24% for children ages 5 to 11 and 31% for those ages 12 to 17 compared with 2019 emergency department visits.  Educators are seeing mental health issues negatively impact classroom behavior, and acting out, causing teacher burnout, teacher attrition, and loss of educational opportunities for all students. 

It has been established that enduring traumatic experiences or living in an environment of extreme or prolonged adversity cause severe stress that can dramatically affect the health and wellness, education, and overall quality and trajectory of children’s lives. 

While mental health cases are increasing, the accessibility of mental health and wellness resources for children in and out of schools remains insufficient to meet the expanding need. In the US, there are 8,500 child psychologists for 73 million children in the US (a ratio of 1 to 8,855). School psychologists are also in short supply, leaving kids without enough support at school, as there are only, based on current data, 1 school psychologist per 1,211 students when the recommended ratio is 1 school psychologist per 500 students. Lower socioeconomic backgrounds, where access to these mental health resources may be needed most, have lower rates of counselors and school psychologists.

We increase the accessibility of informative, engaging, and evidence-based mental health resources tailored for educators, parents/caregivers, and youth-serving professionals, equipping them with the tools to make a life-changing difference in children suffering from mental health issues.  

We do this by partnering with the world’s leading mental health professionals to produce effective digital training videos and accompanying (downloadable, printable) guidebooks for caregivers. The videos are professionally produced through leading video production firms, and the guidebooks are authored by education content writers with expertise in mental health curriculum development.  The content is then shared for public access on a learning-optimized Learning Management System (LMS) that we have customized to serve as an easy-to-access, demand, and scalable solution to meet the needs of educators, parents/caregivers, and youth-serving professionals.

NLG’s mental health training content is designed to democratize access to mental health and child well-being best practices around the nation and the world. We use an effective and unique Human-Centered Communications (HCC) approach (which has been published in an academic Journal) to create our training videos; as traditional training content approaches are not very effective in producing lasting and sustainable results. 

There are five core principles behind the HCC approach. Together, they ensure that the training content is: 

1. Clear, practical, and actionable

2. Easy to access online, on-demand

3. Useful and relevant for educators, parents/caregivers, youth service professionals, or aid workers, of all education levels

4. Evidence-based, culturally informed, diversity, equity, inclusive (DEI Centered) 

5. Engaging and Connective—in other words, emotionally engaging through everyday language, storytelling, and approachable experts on both a cognitive and an emotional level. 

The result is an effective training experience that is a timely solution to help meet the growing needs of educators, parents/caregivers, social workers, and humanitarian aid workers around the nation the world. 

The No Limit Generation (NLG) mental health training platform serves two populations, and enhances the mission-effectiveness of a third: 

1) At-risk and vulnerable children (and the pressing mental-health/ well-being issues of the day). As discussed in the problem section, children's mental health needs are vastly underserved due to resource, time, and location limitations. 

• Resource limitations stem from financial/insurance coverage constraints that price-out children from receiving adequate care. 

• Time limitations stem from parents/caregivers who may work multiple jobs or long hours to access social services that offer no-cost resources but within specific hours or locations 

• Location limitations stem from the fact that most mental health professionals/practitioners reside near urban/large population center environments or areas of affluence; which becomes prohibitive for vulnerable populations who reside in more rural or under-served parts of the country.  

2) Educators, parents/caregivers, and youth-serving professionals (social workers, after-school programs, aid workers, etc). 

• The mental health and well-being of this group need to be prioritized as there is no child-care without self-care. Out of altruistic concern, caregivers often do not prioritize their self-care, we see this in the alarmingly increasing rates of educator/social worker attrition rates across the country during and post Covid-19 due to burn-out. Each NLG training series contains necessary video and written content that focuses on the need for, and strategies to address caregiver self-care best practices and routines. They also include practical exercises and daily meditations one can incorporate to help mitigate or alleviate stress. 

Solution for 1 and 2: NLG's digital training materials are easily accessible online (web and mobile phone). They can also be made accessible offline through mobile phones and thumb drives. Recognizing that most frontline caregivers are not professionals, all training content is designed, produced, and delivered in a way that is comprehensible to all levels of educational and professional backgrounds. 

NLG's training content is comprised of informative, engaging, and on-demand training videos and accompanying downloadable/printable guidebooks for individuals or groups. The training content brings the world’s leading mental health and child well-being professionals into every classroom, home, and crisis center. They are on-demand and designed to fit into the busy schedules of educators, families, and youth-serving professionals.

3) Mental health and Child well-being organizations: We enhance the mission effectiveness of child-focused mental health and well-being organizations. These organizations have great resources and expertise, but are limited in their impact potential because they are not a) communicating with (non-professional) audiences in an accessible way. For instance, their language may be considered too technical, or too general to meet the specific needs of the population. They are also not leveraging digital media as efficiently or effectively as they can to share their healing content or messages. In short: They have the expertise, and they need help getting it across to people who can benefit from it.

Solution:  We partner with organizations and professionals that have proven models of effective mental health or child well-being intervention support. Our partnerships result in the creation of thoughtfully scripted and produced training series designed to scale proven models of well-being to national audiences. We help enhance the mission effectiveness of these organizations; increase their outreach and exposure; and this also can lead to increased financial opportunities (training, consulting, consultations) -- as we have seen happen. 

We have a project pipeline and partnerships ready to go to address the following issues impacting children, all of which are contingent on funding.  These projects are:

• COVID and Back to School Mental Health with Partnerships in Education and Resilience (PEAR)
• Childhood Grier with The Dougy Center
• Child victims of domestic and community violence with The Child Witness to Violence Project
• Drug Endangered Children (DEC) and Human Trafficking with National DEC

We are also looking for partners and funding to address the following issues

• Race & Identity and its ties to mental health

• Opioid Crisis Kids

• Child Suicide/Depression/Cyberbullying

• Military Families

• School Shootings and Mental Health 

• Childhood resilience 
  

• Self and development in a social media age

• Strong bodies and strong minds

We take a ground-up approach in developing our mental health training content for front-line support -- whether the front line is in an active conflict or disaster zone; or for issues that arise in the home or classroom. What does this mean?

We identify the most pressing issues faced by children and partner with leading organizations and individuals who are already on the front lines of addressing these challenges. Through these partnerships, we conduct an in-depth needs assessment on the impact of a particular crisis or mental health event (see issues we've addressed below) on the affected populations. This includes primary research: interviews, focus groups, and round-tables; and secondary research via reports and published findings. The affected children and their caregivers inform our team and mental health partners of the very specific challenges they face, and what would be most helpful for them to support their healing. 

Additionally, we take the time upfront to understand the socio-cultural contexts of the communities we serve -- whether they are of other nations, or within the US. We also build DEI-centered processes to ensure that all of our content is representative and inclusive. 

This process, part of our Human-Centered Communications (HCC) approach ensures that the digital training content (videos and guidebooks) we develop are tailored specifically to the stated needs of the impacted groups and the communities and cultural contexts they are a part of. 

The training videos are published to an accessible learning platform. where the viewers are also equipped with learning guides and course handbooks to support the training process.  To ensure results, a robust and targeted plan to roll out each training series and engage our stakeholder audiences and their communities for maximum impact is implemented.

Since 2018, NLG's training content has been accessed by tens of thousands of educators, youth-serving professionals, humanitarians, and in more than 100 countries around the world through the following projects: 

• Sexual Abuse Prevention and Response in partnership with RAINN and the Oak Foundation (2021) 

• Mental Health Support for Affected Children of Myanmar Conflict and Crisis in partnership with the US Institute of Peace (with funding from the US Dept of State) 

• Ugandan orphans and vulnerable youth in partnership with Grand Challenges Canada and Childs-I Foundation (2021)

• Displaced children of California's wildfires in partnership with the American Red Cross and the North Valley Community Foundation (2020-2021)

• Covid-19 rapid response training series that trained over 1,500 educators and local state officials across the nation (2020)

• Children of the Rohingya Genocide in the refugee camps of Bangladesh/Myanmar in partnership with AMURT Disaster Relief and Development Co-operation (2018-2019) 

NLG’s research and work have been published or presented on high-profile platforms including The American Psychiatric Association Annual Conferences (APA - 2019 and 2020); Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE - 2021); and Comparative and International Educational Society (CIES - 2021).

NLG's vision is to break down he barriers of access to mental health and reach 100 million children in 10 years. Since our inception in 2018, NLG has developed and implemented projects across three continents with national governments and nationally recognized service and educational organizations local organizations in order to serve the most vulnerable children and their caregivers across conflict and crisis issues. 

In this process we have developed a proven and replicable solution. We are now seeking the support of MIT Solve to help us in these critical growth areas: 

1. Organizational Sustainability:  NLG's Our goal is to develop sustainable and recurring fundraising and revue program, to compliment our existing non-grant-based (ie project by project) revenue model. This includes: 
   1. Expansion of our existing project pipeline/ greater efficiency to current "sales" cycle; 
   2. Development and piloting of subscription program for content access through school/education systems. *Note: true to mission, NLG will always keep content at no-cost to individuals and organizations who cannot afford access to it. 
   3. Targeted fundraising from philanthropic donors and foundations 
2. Education technology sales and marketing support: We are working to develop a subscription program for school/education systems that will serve as a primary channel for audience and revenue growth.  In order for this to be successful, it would be helpful to better understand how best to position our solution as we pilot ed-tech marketing and sales. 
3. Establish go-to-market strategy for direct to consumer (B2C) to expand the same programs which will be used to drive school/education technology to deliver B2C solution for parent/caregiver access to NLG's mental health content.  
4. Technology development: Our platform is able to handle our current bandwidth and usage, however, as we grow with our latest projects and adopt a subscription platform we will need to consider effective scaling solutions; and integrate payments access solution to offer subscription services.  we can benefit from guidance that will help evolve our technology in line with strategic growth aspirations.  
5. Board of Director Development: Given the importance of having the right Board of directors, we seek help with identifying the right board-qualifications and individuals to fill out our existing board; and meet our growth objectives. 

There are two core innovations to our solution: 

1) Our Human Centered Communications process that ensures that all content created is clear, practical, and actionable; easy to access on-demand; useful and relevant for all education levels evidence-based, culturally informed; and engaging and Connective—in other words, emotionally engaging through everyday language, storytelling, and approachable experts on both a cognitive and an emotional level.

We created this innovation due to the significant shortage of qualified child mental health professionals. In the US, 80% of children are not getting the mental health care they need; and in countries like Uganda, Myanmar, Bangladesh where we have partners, up to 99% of children cannot access mental health support due to financial, time, and proximity issues. 

On the front lines of crisis, mental health cases rise significantly, and fatigues available resources and practitioners. NLG's mental health training platform is an informative and accessible digital library that can be incorporated into any intervention to better protect, support, and heal vulnerable and affected children. 

Traditional training videos are not very effective, so we don’t make them. In partnership with leading child well-being professionals, we develop practical guidance that’s designed to engage, inspire, and create sustainable impact. Our innovative process breaks down complex mental health concepts into every day language that anyone, regardless of education level can understand and implement. We’ve worked with thousands of educators, parents, and social workers and the result is unique and effective Human-Centered Communications (HCC) approach designed by NLG, which has been written about and published in New York University’s Journal on Education in Emergencies, and the book, _Innovations in Mental Health_ by Springer Publication.

Accessibility and localization are the central components of the HCC approach. Consistent with how end-users and other beneficiaries currently access media content, NLG digital training materials are easily accessible online (web and mobile phone). They can also be made accessible offline through mobile phone and thumb drives through partnership with Libraries without Borders in internet geographies like refugee camps and other remote areas. Recognizing that most fontline care-givers are not professionals, all training content is designed, produced and delivered in a way that is comprehensible to all levels of educational and professional backgrounds. 

NLG also works with Translators without Borders for translation and localization services where our existing content is translated and dubbed into different languages. This provides a rapid response capability for crisis points that emerge. For instance, The US Institute of Peace partnered with NLG recently to translate and dub existing mental health content into Burmese to support displaced children of conflict in the aftermath of the Military coup in 2021. Additionally, NLG conducted translation and dubbing of its content in 2018 to support humanitarian agencies working with displaced Rohingya refugee children in Bangladesh.

NLG has defined a set process to ensure that critical mental heath and child well-being concepts are translated into actionable resources:

A. Identify of Challenges & Trusted Partners

We identify the most pressing issues faced by children and partner with leading organizations and individuals addressing these challenges on the front-lines.

B. Conduct Needs Assessment & Curriculum Development

We conduct a needs assessment with stakeholder audiences and, in collaboration with partnered-experts, develop a tailored curriculum and production script.

C. Production

Our team of savvy media professionals get to work in crafting an emotionally connected, informative, and powerful learning experience that’s designed to create impact.

D. Learning Experience Delivery

We publish the training videos to an accessible learning platform. We also equip our audiences with learning guides and course handbooks to support the training process.

E. Implementation

Just publishing videos online doesn’t guarantee results. We develop a robust and targeted plan to roll-out each training series and engage our stakeholder audiences and their communities for maximum impact.

F. Impact Assessment

We leverage a series of sophisticated tools to monitor and measure the impact of each training series. This data allows us to respond in real time, strengthening interventions if and when necessary.

2. Our Online Learning Management System 

NLG's powerful training videos are available anytime and anywhere.  We bring the world’s leading mental health and child well-being professionals into every classroom, home, or crisis point in an intuitive format. 

Our training is on-demand and designed to fit into the busy schedules of educators, families, and youth-serving professionals. In this way, we use the power of digital media to its fullest potential as we break down traditional barriers to access children's mental health.

This innovation is catalytic in the sense that it provides a practical, accessible and scalable solution to help meet what is a significant gap in integrated mental health service accessibility nationally and globally. We envision the NLG platform to grow and serve every major school district in the US as a mental health resource partner; and major humanitarian organizations and governments (of which we have several current partnerships with) for international crisis and ongoing mental health resource support. 

By December of 2023

• Finalize our raise of $1.5 million to onboard key hires: 
• Complete board search, reach 8 board members (from current 4)  
• Initiate and luanch four new mental health series designed to meet the most pressing needs of school districts across the US. 
• Launch subscription pilot plan with 20 schools/districts and reach 50,000 children. 
• Initiate and launch two global projects outside of the US, with combined reach of 10,000 children. 

By December of 2028

• 30+ training series in our subscription model content library
• 2500+ US school districts leveraging NLG content with 10 million kids reached
• Introduction of NLG-Connect, an online-system on our platform where schools, organizations, or parents/caregivers can directly book access to the mental health experts featured in NLG training videos (ie ZocDoc for mental health training or one-on-one sessions)
• Global reach of our service reaches 2 million children outside of the USA. 

The mission of NLG is to enhance the lives of children so they are happy, successful, and purpose-driven through supporting their mental health and well-being. We do this through engaging in meaningful partnerships leaning child-wellbeing or mental health organizations to create informative, engaging, and scalable best practices implementable in every home, classroom, and crisis point. Our vision to reach 100 million children within 10 years. 

There are two main metric categories that NLG has used to assess impact and progress:

1) Mental Health Training Platform growth metrics: These indicators currently assess the growth and usage of NLG’s platform. They include metrics such as:

• Number of caregivers accessing the platform
• Number of education institutions/organizations reached 
• Frequency of content engagement/downloads
• Average duration of content engagement
• Geographic reach and consumption of content

2) Real world impact: These metrics will be used to measure the impact NLG’s platform has on caregivers and children. To achieve this, baseline studies (surveys/research) and end-line study have measured:

• Increased learning outcomes on key mental health and well-being topics learned as part of training series
• Mental health, functioning, and well-being of caregivers and children
• Ability to identify cases of stress, trauma, or other well-being challenges addressed in our content 
• Proficiency in handling cases and/or referrals for children needing professional per the existing referral pathways
• This will be followed by an observation period and post-study survey that measures knowledge, attitudes, and practices inclusive of the following:
• Caregiver engagement with self-care practices
• Embodiment of qualities such as empathy, compassion, optimism, engagement and joy in interactions, with children
• Knowledge to create a supportive environments where children can heal and thrive

These measurements help us:

1) Enhance and shape our overall content strategy and mission to provide relevant, timely, and critical training guidance to caregivers

2) Optimize the NLG platform for improved accessibility and scalability

3) Refine our growth strategy 

Educators, parents/caregivers, and youth-serving professionals make up the frontline of support for children. Yet most do not have mental health training or access to professionals due to resource, time, and proximity challenges. The science on Children's mental health is clear: Children can heal and become resilient from ongoing stress-factors and trauma, provided the right care and support from the primary adults/caregivers in their lives.  

By watching/reading NLG training content -- which is designed to meet them at their educational/socio-cultural context -- they become equipped with mental health and well-being knowledge and best practices to make a supportive and healing difference in a child's life (this is called task-shifting). They are better able to relate to and support a child in their mental health needs, the child has the opportunity to heal, and thrive, and prevent lifelong consequences in areas of mental, physical, and social development.

Educators, parents/caregivers, youth-serving professionals who access NLG's training content and can better identity stress/trauma/mental health concerns of their students/children, and respond in an affective and appropriate way. They also have the tools for self-care, so they can manage and regulate the impact of stress/trauma-events or enduring stress in their own lives. 

As a result, children receive the care and support they need; and Educators, parents/caregivers, youth-serving professionals are better informed to make a healing difference; and they feel less burnt out (decrease in attrition) and find greater meaning, purpose and satisfaction in their job or roles. 

NLG's platform is a digital training platform built as a learning management system (LMS). It can be viewed currently in this link.

Each training course has its own project page. Within the page are the following components: 

1. Brief introduction to the context of why this specific training series was made, what it covers and who will benefit from it

2. Bios and overview of the mental health and child well-being experts (local and global) who contributed to the development of the training content

3. Introduction/Trailer video: that breaks down the key lessons and what what viewers can expect to learn from watching the full training series 

4. Training videos -- Short, engaging training experiences segmented into 4-10 min videos ( on average 45 mins - 1 hour total duration per series) 

5. Downloadable/Printable illustrated guidebook that expands upon the lessons in the videos; provides key learning points; additional references to look into; critical questions; and discussion guides for group learning and training. 

NLG's LMS is scalable and Efficient: NLG’s open-access platform provides an efficient, and cost-saving method of training at scale.

NLG ensures that each project meets strict DEI centered requirements. This means the content is shaped in an inclusive, representative, and culturally informed format. This process is built-in from the conception and design of every project we take on. We take a ground up approach to ensure that each project is led and informed each step of the way by the affected groups we are serving, be they in the US or around the world. In this way we elevate the voices and experiences of marginalized and under-represented groups. 

As a diverse organization built on a mission to heal, support, and protect the most vulnerable and marginalized children, we affirm our commitment, and our actions, to help see healing towards real and lasting change.

No Limit Generation believes that every child has the right to a world that is free of racism and fear. That every child has the right to a world where they are not locked out of their opportunities through prejudice; but are supported with safe and inclusive environments that respect their dignity and encourage their limitless potential.

We commit ourselves to ensuring that every teacher, parent, community member, and social worker is equipped with the guidance and resources to confront systems of racism and oppression; to heal the wounds of hate; to replace prejudice with love and acceptance; and empower the vulnerable and the marginalized with equal voice, belonging, and inclusion.

It’s up to us to uplift the next generation. Together, we can raise a generation with no limits to their opportunities, freedom and joy.

We bring the leading mental health professionals into every home, classroom, and crisis point across the nation and the world, in an engaging, informative, impactful, and understandable format.  Through this, we help organizations expand their reach and impact as our learning experiences are on-demand and designed to fit into the busy schedules of educators, families, and youth serving professionals. 

The additional value NLG brings to our partners is quality, passion, connections and commitment, as described by the CEO of Child's I Foundation after we released our collaboration Breaking the Cycle.  

Currently, NLG is working on bringing in one to two more projects to enhance our short term operational capabilities, while we seek $1.55 million to set the organization up for long-term self-sufficiency.  This money will be used to drive new program development, and scale up the existing mission impact. The money will allow us to hire critical team members, and deliver three new training series of critical national relevance for which we can use as the basis for our subscription/revenue model.  With this money we also hope to hire a grant writer so that we can attain grants/project sponsorship in the amounts of $500,000 in year 1 with a 20% increase year over year to fund future projects nationally and internationally.  Our conservative estimate has us financially sustainable with equity for start of Year 3.