The Meaning of Raahat is give relief in Hindustani. Thus, The Raahat Project (Raahat) aims to provide relief to LGBTQIA++ youth by improving their well-being and addressing their mental health concerns.

Why? Because their mental health remains highly neglected within communities. Raahat hopes to change this by building knowledge, awareness, and self-care capacity amongst LGBTQIA++ youth.

We believe this is especially critical in a demographically young country like India which has several million LGBTQIA++ individuals. While this diverse group may have achieved decriminalization, their well-being and mental health remain neglected. This is because of limited positive public narratives on, and institutional understanding of, LGBTQIA++ communities. The communities also deal with widespread social rejection, stigmatisation, victimisation, homophobia and transphobia which directly impacts their mental health. So, through Raahat, we aim to work with the LGBTQIA++ youth communities in select universities to build a youth-led multilingual Mental Health Awareness, and Self-Care Program with the aim to reduce self-stigma and improve the mental health awareness and self-care capability of LGBTQIA++ youth.

The Raahat Project will involve workshops and activities as well as the development of a learning module on mental health and self-care, that will be co-created with its participants, i.e., LGBTQIA++ communities of select colleges in India.

The Raahat Project is housed at the Blue Banyan Consulting LLP and is supported by Grand Challenges Canada, funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) using UK AID from the UK Government.