2026 Youth Mental Health Fellowship update
2026 asean-Pacific YOUTH MENTAL HEALTH FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM
The Orygen Global Youth Mental Health Fellowship is a hybrid six-month long program that combines professional insights and education from leading global mental health organisations, individual development and mentorship with industry leaders and advocacy training from those with experience at a local, national and international level through workshops, mentoring, collaborative advocacy initiatives and an in-person forum.
Commencing in 2021, our seven completed Fellowships have empowered 105 youth mental health advocates from 44 countries.
ASEAN-Pacific Youth Mental Health Fellowships
In 2025, following the successes of the earlier Global and ASEAN-Australia Fellowships, our focus was expanded to include Pacific Island nations. In 2026 with our seventh cohort, the ASEAN-Pacific Youth Mental Health Fellowship welcomed 16 Fellows from Australia, nine of the 11 ASEAN Member states; New Zealand, Tonga and Samoa and Fiji. The Fellows commenced in January with the program concluding in July.
Over the course of the program’s online learning modules and expert and peer mentoring, the Fellows learnt the fundamentals of mental health advocacy including safe storytelling, project planning through theories of change, creative ways of sharing, decolonising mental health advocacy and using digital media in advocacy.
The Fellows met in Singapore in June where they attended a very busy four-day forum. The forum provided a much-valued opportunity to meet in person and to engage in workshops, network with mental health leaders in the region and pitch their projects to funders and NGO organisations in Singapore. The forum included speakers from Australia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines with workshops on fundraising, policy, evaluation, leadership and public speaking.
Upon conclusion of the program, we look forward to welcoming the Fellows to our vibrant Fellowship alumni network where they will continue to be able to engage and contribute through opportunities provided and steered by Orygen Global and our alumni engagement committee. We wish them every success as mental health advocates as they take the learnings from the program into their individual pursuits.