Build Communities
Our community engagement programmes create reflective spaces for ongoing conversations around mental health, “illness”, treatment, madness, distress, and the ways we relate to ourselves, others, and society at large. These are not one-way, expert-led sessions, but spaces where people can exchange thoughts and ideas, share feelings, debate, be curious, experience something different together, and leave with the group in their mind.
Through these conversations, we continue to learn from the community’s needs and expectations of mental health professionals, while recognising that we are always engaging with a small segment of a much larger social, political, and cultural body. Our hope is to keep creating such spaces across the cities we call home, with members of the community increasingly shaping and facilitating them.
Everyone has a story to tell
Our community awareness programs:
Chai-logue
In 2017, Chai-logue began with the idea that mental health is a continuum, not something that simply shifts between “health” and “pathology”. Through themes related to mental health, Chailogue invites people to share thoughts, feelings, and experiences beyond conventional or clinical explanations. Much like the cup of chai we offer (offline!), the space hopes to be warm, unconditional, and free. While we facilitate the conversation, we do not presume to be experts or guides.
At Chai-logue, everyone is learning
Tender Margins
Tender Margins began as a 6-week online reading group centred on queer-trans* joy and lived experiences. The idea for this space was born out of a need to celebrate lives that are being erased and invisibilised. Reading is often such a solitary, personal, and private experience. Tender Margins asks what it might mean to reimagine reading as a communal act — one where we witness each other’s existence. Each week, we read one short story together and gathered to reflect, play, and linger with the textures of everyday life and quiet resistance.
Chaupal
Drawing from the idea of the chaupal in villages of Rajasthan — a shared community space where people gather to talk, debate, exchange knowledge, make decisions, or simply spend time together, Chaupal was created as a space where conversations about mental health could move out of clinics and into the community. Through facilitated discussions, people are invited to question, share, and explore ideas of mental health beyond stigma, labels, and clinical language. Over time, Chaupal became a reflective space for people to think together about distress, care, empathy, support, and the role of community in mental wellbeing. The initiative continues to run in Jaipur through Khejdi for Mental Health. To learn more about their work, please visit/follow Khejdi for Mental Health.
NOBODY READS
THE FINE PRINT
When NRFP began, the name, stood as a metaphor for the experience of an individual with a diagnosis of Personality Disorder – The emphasis remains on what’s overt; we see when someone ‘acts out’ or behaves in ways that are considered self-destructive or sabotaging but we find it much harder to consider the undercurrents. We wanted to draw attention to this oversight and the space became a monthly dialogue around the influence of the social, political and cultural undercurrents on our mental health.
Potluck Poetry
Potluck Poetry is a community for poetry enthusiasts where participants come together to share and listen to poems surrounding a particular theme. The space was created in an attempt to facilitate open dialogue about mental health with the help of poetry. The vast world of imagery and metaphors in poetry has been a great way for community members to explore their own thoughts and feelings surrounding each theme and of course, to discover beautiful poetry along the way.
cathARTic
CathARTic is a community for those who'd like to explore art, with each session revolving around a unique theme. It is a space for us to come together, delving into the transformative power of art and engaging in meaningful discussions about the emotions and revelations sparked by the creative process. Here, aesthetics take a back seat, making room for the process to shine.
Journeying
Journeying is a space where people can come together to journal in the quiet presence of others. Moving away from places and faces, or experiencing a shift in ourselves and in relationships there are so many kinds of transitions we experience as we go through life.
