inFocus: Mental Health & Well-Being

For children and families across the country, mental health and well-being are shaped by the conditions of daily life. Through conversations with communities across our network, GreenLight has heard a clear and consistent need for greater access to mental health and well-being support. Stress, trauma, disconnection, and limited access to care can affect how families heal, how young people show up in school, and how communities build pathways toward stability–needed before any other support can take root. In places shaped by poverty and long-term underinvestment, these challenges are often intensified by systemic inequities that have made support harder to reach.

In response, GreenLight works with communities to match this locally identified need with programs that have demonstrated results elsewhere and can take root in each city’s local context. We identify organizations with the best local fit, helping expand access to the resources, relationships, and networks of support children and families need. These organizations meet people in integrated ways, bringing care closer to daily life and creating more opportunities to build trust, strengthen connections, and move toward healing.

This is the impact GreenLight is bringing inFocus: community-driven solutions that expand access to mental health and well-being support so children and families can heal, grow, and thrive.

Fathers’ UpLift: Supporting Fathers, Strengthening Families

In Cincinnati, Fathers’ UpLift works with fathers and families to strengthen relationships, support healing, and help fathers have a meaningful presence in their children’s lives. The organization provides therapy, coaching, mentorship, and family support for fathers navigating barriers that can affect their mental health and family stability.

This work recognizes how deeply children’s well-being is connected to the adults who care for them. When fathers have space to process trauma, build confidence, and receive support, the impact reaches the whole family. In 2024-2025, Fathers’ UpLift engaged 165 fathers in services, supported 110 fathers in positive parent-child activities, and trained 6 clinical social work master’s-level students in Cincinnati.

Together, these efforts help create stronger foundations at home. Fathers’ UpLift is expanding access to culturally responsive mental health support while strengthening the relationships that help children and families thrive.

Inner Explorer: Bringing Mindfulness Into the School Day

In Atlanta, Charlotte, and the Twin Cities, Inner Explorer helps schools make mindfulness part of the daily rhythm of learning. Through short, audio-guided practices, students and teachers have a simple way to pause, breathe, and reset during the school day.

The program is designed to be easy for schools to use, culturally relevant and accessible for students across grade levels. These moments of mindfulness help young people recognize what they are feeling, manage stress, and return to learning with greater focus. For educators, the shared practice supports a calmer classroom environment and gives students a tool they carry beyond the school day.

Across GreenLight cities, Inner Explorer is reaching students, educators, and families at meaningful scale. During the 2024-2025 school year, Inner Explorer reached nearly 130,000 individuals across Charlotte, Atlanta, and the Twin Cities. That scale reflects more than program reach; it shows how daily, accessible support can become part of the learning environment for whole school communities.

One teacher utilizing the program in their classroom recently shared, “I’ve seen a complete transformation in my classroom since starting Inner Explorer. Even the most disruptive students are now class leaders during mindfulness time.”

BAM and WOW: Creating Space for Young People to Be Seen

Youth Guidance’s Becoming A Man (BAM) and Working On Womanhood (WOW) programs support young people through school-based spaces built on trust, reflection, and consistent adult guidance.

BAM creates a space for young men of color to reflect on their experiences, strengthen their sense of self, and build tools for navigating school, relationships, and the future. Led by trauma-informed counselors, the group sessions invite students to talk openly, practice accountability, and consider the kind of men they want to become. During the 2024-2025 school year, BAM reached over 1,000 students across cities in GreenLight’s network.

In Boston: 79% of BAM scholars showed growth across all 14 values in the Holistic Student Assessment, with top areas of improvement in critical thinking, assertiveness, learning interest and empathy

In Kansas City: 98% of BAM participants were promoted to the next grade level with 100% of BAM seniors graduating

For girls in grades 6 through 12, WOW offers school-based mentoring and clinical support during some of the most formative years of adolescence. The program helps young women process difficult emotions, build confidence, and strengthen their ability to advocate for themselves. . During the 2024-2025 school year, WOW reached nearly 500 students across GreenLight cities. 

In Boston: 73% of WOW program participants reported experiencing less anxiety, marking significant improvements in mental health 

In Kansas City: 64% of WOW program participants who started in the clinical range for depression had lower depression symptoms after participating in WOW

The power of these programs often comes from the relationships they build. For some students, BAM or WOW may be the first place they feel comfortable speaking honestly about what they are carrying. For others, it becomes a steady source of encouragement as they navigate school, relationships, identity, and the future.

Building Support Around Young People and Families

Together, Fathers’ UpLift, Inner Explorer, BAM, and WOW show what becomes possible when mental health and well-being support reaches children and families in the places they already know and trust. By making care more accessible and connected to daily life, these programs create more pathways for healing, stability, and support.

That is central to GreenLight’s approach. We listen to what’s missing, what communities identify as urgent, then help bring in proven programs that respond to those needs in ways that fit the local context. Across our network, these investments are helping children and families build emotional resilience, strengthen relationships, succeed in school and feel more supported in the places where they live and learn.

Mental health support does not always look like a single turning point. Sometimes it looks like a calmer classroom, a father reconnecting with his child, a young person finding the words for what they feel, or a trusted adult showing up again and again.

Across GreenLight communities, those moments are adding up.