For Maddison O’Gradey-Lee, co-founder of the Orygen Global Youth Mental Health Fellowship, effective advocacy starts with trust and lived experience. The fellowship was born out of consultations with young people who felt isolated and unsupported in their mental health work. In response, O’Gradey-Lee and her co-founder designed a six-month program led by and for youth with lived experience, providing mentorship, skills development, and a community of peers. The aim: to help young advocates see themselves as capable leaders and recognize advocacy as a viable, long-term career path.

The fellowship responds to the problem by:

• Co-designing with youth to ensure programs reflect their real needs.
• Building agency through mentorship, training, and peer networks.
• Fostering resilience by helping participants process and take pride in their lived experience.

Nearly 100 fellows from 47 countries have completed the program, many collaborating across borders, launching new initiatives, or leading policy labs with governments and universities. Alumni frequently describe the fellowship as the first place where they felt “not alone” in their work—connected to others who understand and share their mission.

O’Gradey-Lee’s reflections highlight how centering youth voices and dismantling power imbalances can transform advocacy programs. She emphasizes flexibility and adaptation across cultural contexts, noting that meaningful impact often unfolds over time rather than within predetermined outputs.

Coordinating global programs can strain small teams, and bureaucratic hurdles slow policy engagement. Despite these challenges, O’Gradey-Lee remains optimistic: when young people are trusted to lead and given room to adapt, she says, “that’s when the most meaningful change happens.”

Judah Njoroge came to Orygen as a fellow through the organization's Global Youth Mental Health Fellowship, which brought together young advocates from around the world. The fellowship introduced him to his first global conference, equipped him with skills to navigate international spaces, and provided ongoing support as his work evolved. That experience of intentional mentorship shaped how he now approaches youth leadership himself. Based in Nairobi, Kenya, Njoroge's work in community mental health began with his own lived experience and a realization that mental health solutions needed to account for the whole person. In 2018, he founded Integrative Wellbeing, an organization built on three prongs: lived experience, learned experience, and shared experience. Today, he also works with The Resilience Project, supporting young changemakers in navigating burnout, leadership, and climate action.

Njoroge is clear about what meaningful youth leadership requires: meeting young people where they are, rather than asking them to conform to a predetermined model. When The Resilience Project program, originally designed in Europe, was brought to East Africa in 2025, Njoroge convened a 12-person steering committee composed entirely of young people. His work includes:

• Walking through the entire program with the steering committee and asking them to adjust, remove, or add anything they saw fit, rather than treating the evidence-based model as fixed.
• Translating language and concepts to fit local contexts, including finding equivalents for terms like climate anxiety that do not exist in local languages.
• Continuing to adapt the program as fellows move through it, acknowledging that the initial steering committee was only a representation of the community.
• Intentionally mentoring younger advocates every three years, sharing how he navigated systems, accessed resources, and managed burnout.
• Co-founding Youth for Mental Health, a collective of young leaders in Kenya who support emerging advocates in universities and high schools.

Njoroge describes the challenges of stepping back as requiring both courage and humility. Being told that your work does not resonate is difficult, but separating that feedback from the work's value allows for collaboration without losing program fidelity. He also points to structural barriers: power imbalances when a young person sits on a board with PhDs, pay disparities where a researcher earns thousands while a youth representative earns $25 per hour, and organizations prioritizing their own frameworks over genuinely listening.

At 28, Njoroge is thinking actively about his exit from youth advocacy. He plans to step down at 30, five years before Kenya's official youth cutoff age of 35, to give himself time to navigate the transition while amplifying the voices of those coming behind him. His response has been to reframe how he shows up: posting photos of the young people he leads alongside his own, emphasizing "we" instead of "I," and making clear that he represents only the people who have entrusted him with their voices, not an entire city or country. What he finds missing in this transition is collaborative space, noting that the cross-pollination he experienced in the youth movement is harder to find as an organization navigating institutional priorities.