Masaha, Jeddah’s emerging platform, started with an initiative to promote and create awareness for the youth’s mental health and has become the talk of town among high schoolers and young adults. With its one-of-a-kind approach to creating awareness for mental health and starting as a Youth Mental Health Summit to take place yearly, Masaha quickly created a widespread shift amidst the health and wellness scene in Jeddah.
In an exclusive interview with Bakeel Yamani, the founder and CEO of the Masaha community, we reveal the deep-rooted stories and tales behind this novel platform and explore the exciting experiences she has been through with the platform and what interesting elements make up this initiative.
Getting to know more about Bakeel and what inspired her to start this initiative, she said, “Ever since I became a Youth Emotional Intelligence trainer, I enjoyed listening to what the community had to say and exploring different ways to navigate their emotions. I always admired how they saw the world.” A peek into her personal life, she also added, “I was raised in a family where emotional wellbeing was always a priority and working on our mental health was encouraged by my parents. Fast forward 10 years later, I still wished I could’ve had additional support, especially during my teenage years. Now as an Emotional Intelligence Youth Facilitator, I realized working alone limits the impact, and after witnessing COVID-19’s effect on the community, I knew something needed to be done.
After confirming how much she enjoyed listening to others and doing it for a couple of years, Bakeel saw the need to make a bigger impact and the support that was required to do so, hence, starting Masaha Community, which she claimed created a bridge between the youth community and professional mental health experts.
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Intrigued by the name, we dug deeper into the origin of Masaha’s name to learn that since the summit focuses on introducing mental health topics and wellbeing in mainly Arabic, the word ‘Masaha’ literally translates to the word ‘space’, in Arabic. The word also carries a metaphor with it which is “giving individuals a safe, fun and interactive Masaha to navigate their own thoughts and feelings, introducing tools to understand themselves better, and providing them with resources that will help them work in their own mental health and well being; hence the slogan: Do you need space?
Determined to give Masaha a louder voice, Bakeel explained the prime challenge she faced, “One of Masaha’s goals was to involve the private sector, governmental sector, and mental health institutions to deliver a unique experience in a summit of ours. Yet, being it our first year, we found it very challenging to convince different stakeholders.”
Even though this was an issue at hand, Bakeel was determined to break past it and eventually gained a supporter, Ignite Centre, where they helped provide the team and volunteers with Emotional Intelligence training and hosted an activity corner under the name of ‘EQ Pop Up’, at the summit. We asked if there’s any particular experience from the summit that stuck with her, and the founder shared, “I think it’s the calls that I still receive, even after the summit is over, and it makes my heart super happy. It made me realize the impact that Masaha left on people and on me personally. I think of it as a success story for myself, especially whenever I am in doubt”. Masaha is now at the very beginning stage of working towards hosting another Youth Mental Health summit for the community, where volunteers age 15 – 22 will be asked to take part.
Instagram: masaha_community
