Walok Textline

Get Free 24/7 Mental-Health support you can find at your fingertips. Connect, Chat, Share and Get relief. Walok is here for you and with you, for you are never alone.

Many people in low and middle-income countries face daily challenges, and their mental-health has been additionally burdened by COVID-19.

Mental health is the pivot of human life. However, despite its importance, it is often the least prioritized among health conditions. In low and medium-income countries like Uganda where disease, ignorance, and poverty are common, a demand for steadfast mental healthcare can seem a luxury (WHO, 2019).

Depression, anxiety disorders, and elevated stress levels are the most common, sometimes leading to suicide attempts (Farzaei et al., 2016). Uganda is ranked among the top six countries in Africa in rates of depressive disorders (4.6%; Miller 2020), while 2.9% live with anxiety disorders (WHO, 2017). About 5.1% of females and 3.6% of males are affected. 

Sustained stress exposure causes people to turn to damaging behavior like crime, reckless sexual acts, violence, domestic abuse, and substance abuse. Reports indicate that 80% of Ugandan youths are using alcohol (Ayebare 2019). Without doubt, COVID-19 has imposed a significant mental health burden upon the people of Uganda.

It is reported from New Vision, it is estimated that 14 million Ugandans have mental health disorder of the 42 million population 'https://www.newvision.co.ug/ca...'. This means that every 35 of 100 Ugandan one meets may be battling a mental health problem.Today, this number could have grown exponentially because of the crisis of COVID-19 said Dr. Charles Olaro, the director of curative services at the health ministry.  

Uganda being a young nation with more youth population, it edifies that youths are the most affected, and it is evidenced in the high drug abuse rate in the country lately, high rates of gender based violence, high rates of teenage pregnancies and early marriage in the communities.

With the rising cost of living, pressures of modern life and substance abuse, many Ugandans, mainly the young population, are suffering silently with various mental illnesses. UNICEF reported that during COVID-19 about 25% of teenagers got pregnant, others raped, defiled, engaged in drug abuse among others making these young people to experience mental torture of which most are still in torture 'https://www.unicef.org/uganda/...'. 

Young people are in this mess just because metal healthcare is expensive and always seem a luxury in Africa. Walok comes in to provide a platform where one is free from judgement, where one get to access mental health support from their fingertip.

Our Project Walok Helpline  both a Web and Mobile Application that helps bridge the gap between people in crisis (Mental Health Disorder) providing free mental health texting and call services through confidential crisis intervention via SMS messages and toll free calls. 

Also providing better crisis over-coming free tools such as videos, blogs, mental health success stories  and articles to help the young population of Uganda with mental health disorders.

Mobile Application: one needs to access the apk, then installs it on their devices. They are able to access a messaging session, Calling Session, Learning session where they are able to access online materials, self-care where they are guided through some exercises. And search in for the nearest mental health counselor or government hospital to provide the right contacts of the practitioners handling counseling. Avoiding other expensive Expenses.

They are able to send messages under anonymous for privacy unless they need to and have someone on the other side listening to them and sharing with them thoughts.

For web, accessing the Walok url and site name gives one access into the system. They are able to read articles, blogs and other peoples stories. You never know what you will learn from ones challenges, great growth and mature wisdom. If one wills to share with everyone their experience and impact someone, they are able to write to us and we publish the stories. There are opportunities for volunteers who are first interviewed and are to be found able only will they volunteer. Weekly articles of thrice a week and blog post wit stories provides a connection. We intend to add on Machine Learning and AI to help improve on our services.

We believe this is possible to help Ugandan population fight mental health disorders as from a 2021 analysis, it found that for every minute of the day people around the globe sent 2 million Snapchat messages, watched 167 million videos on TikTok, and streamed almost 700,000 hours’ worth of video content on YouTube.

It is an astonishing and constantly expanding amount of information and the use of mobile technologies with the advancement in technology. With a steady emergence of Mobile phones into Africa and such growing numbers in Uganda, that is like most people have phones and using it to help solve a problem is a positive gesture.  

The number of smartphones registered in Uganda has grown steadily quarter-on-quarter, going from 4.57 million in the first quarter of 2018 to then reaching over ten million by the first quarter of 2022, report from by statista (https://www-statista-com.ezproxyberklee.flo.org) At the start of 2020, the amount of data in the world was estimated to be 44 zettabytes.

Individually and collectively we feel the impact and contribute to it. As individuals, we experience information overload, negative self-image and stereotypes. We lose the ability to make independent, fact-based decisions and suffer from negative mental health outcomes, such as increased anxiety. Societies witness increases in division and polarization, animosity and intolerance, growing inequities and a trust deficit.

The high rise in smart phone usage and addiction in Uganda gives our solution a high ground of impact as people will always have not to go to the hospital over and over a gain as it seems quite expensive and time wasting. Mobile devices gives Walok a higher ground to help Ugandans fight mental health disorders. With well detailed features in both the App and web applicatoin, members are able to reach a counselor through text messaging as anonymous for privacy, Articles and blogs which are posted like three times a week and the ability to share your story with others to build them up.

 With Walok, we intend to incorporate AI and Machine Learning to help deliver better articles and learn which mental health disorder is extreme in a particular area and send the right team and sensitize the population with the right toolkit. Big Data and Data analytics, help create a better nation of Uganda and look forward to reaching East Africa on its successful operation in Uganda and later expanding to reaching Africa.

To have this big vision take positive effect, great individuals of diverse fields are working together to achieve this. Career paths of Computer Science, Machine Learning and AI, Counselors, Social scientists and therapists.

Okello Jeremiah Joseph - Team Lead

Jeremiah is a Computer Science Student with over 3 years of active industry work experience. He is a Software Engineer, ICDL certified, and IEEE certified active member. He is a co-founder of a Tech Start-up company in Lira City Northern Uganda (https://kakebe.com/). A youth led tech company helping businesses in the region have tech solutions to add on their business profits. 

A co-founder of Mimbacare Technologies Limited another research tech company working on a possible solution to the high rates of maternal deaths in Uganda by developing a small IoT wearable device that helps the doctors to take their health vitals  in real time and in case of a change in values, mothers can easily be notified through SMS and notifications from the doctor.  Jeremiah has volunteered with Wazihub IoT Lab at Hive Colab when this project was still operating in Uganda.  Volunteered with World Vision Uganda Oyam-Kole Area Program engaging with the school dropouts, teenage mothers and Journey International a non-profit organization working in the poorest areas of Northern Uganda Omoro District with young people and the community. He is a computer Enthusiast and passionate to create solutions for society issues with technology. Chairperson and founder of a youth Organization in Kole District helping young people cope up with the effects of COVID-19 and engaging them in projects that are economically productive (https://www.roence.org/)

Apio Elizabeth Ruth - A Social Scientist 

Final year student pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Social Science at Makerere University Kampala Uganda. Times of work with the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development doing her internship and learning the inner dynamics of gender and social impacts in Uganda. She had opportunities to do a lot of field work reaching out to a diverse youth population. Volunteered with Village Enterprise Uganda, doing field work and compiling reports.

Worked as research assistant at Lincoln Investment and Consultancy for Easy-U25 Project UYDEL-Kampala, youth friendly sexual reproductive service providers survey. “EASY-U25” is a project being implemented by Uganda Youth Development Link (UYDEL) in partnership with Lutheran World Federation and financial support from Bread for the World. The project aims at addressing poverty, commercial sexual exploitation of children and young people, teenage pregnancy, Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs), including HIV/AIDS and gender stereotypes among 3,000 adolescents both boys and girls aged 12-18 years living in the slums of Kampala, Uganda. 

Giving her more space to relate and understand how Ugandan youths are silently fighting mental Health issues. Giving her more passion to give back to the community and she believes this project (Walok Helpline) will be a saver for many young Ugandans that’s why she is giving her time to have this project sprout.

Adonyo Maurise -  System Development Manager 

Maurise is a computer scientist fresh-graduate from Mbarara University of Science and Technology. Maurise has good knowledge in computer programming and Android Development. He has been able to work on AI mobile application that helps in reading and having confirmatory tests on x-ray readings for those with pneumonia, rated the best end of year project at the institute.

Apiny Melody Gladys - Counselor Lead 

Melodie is currently working with Lira Regional Referral Hospital as a psychologist and psychotherapist. Working in as Sexual and Reproductive Health worker for those living with HIV/AIDs and counseling those living with AIDs. She is a SRH activist reaching out to schools counseling young people living with AIDS and those fighting mental health disorders. 

She Graduated from Lira university with a Bachelor of Science in Community Psychology and Psychotherapy. 

Otolo Sedrick - Project Coordinator

Sedrick is software engineer graduate, Cyber security and Networking graduate, and currently a Machine Learning and AI student from the University of ISBAT. 

He has 3 years of industrial work as a programer, Co-Founder of Kakebe Technology, Mimbacare Technologies and great motivational speaker. He is the 2020 National Innovators Award honor, JANZI award winner and Best Innovator of the year 2020. Passionate about working with the young people and has so far been invited in for many conferences to have a talk and career guidance with young people. Volunteered with Wazi Hub -  Hive Colab European Union funded an IoT innovation program, aimed at problem solving and innovative approach to foster creation of IoT products and services.

As a team we each play a role in the build up of this project. A pilot survey was done being led by Apio Elizabeth Ruth a final year Social Scientist student. The team found that for every 7 young people interviewed on how this system would be beneficial to them and if it will create impact. The statistics shows that 4 of  every 7 young people were positive, they said since it is a mobile app and the web application version also available, reading the stories and reaching out to a crisis counselor will be easy and this will make them engage. 3 of every 7 people met opted to share their stories on the platform to inspire others, motivate and guide friends on how to fight mental health disorders.

This is quite true for the rising number of smart phone usage and internet usage in my country. During the survey, some suggested that having a podcast and hosting of Twitter spaces would also be a good way to advocate and fight mental health disorder.

Its a true fact that social media has surely enslaved young people. And often times it is from it that most young people get depressions, anxious and others. Our solution comes in not to stop or prevent social media, it has come in to help support young people into creating the best of there moments. Keeping away negative vibes and providing from them opportunity to envision a future worth investing in. 

It's not like we are setting up a new team, we come in partnership with already existing mental health counselors and hospitals. The only catalyst is, these services are provided freely on the platform. We hope to partner with the government in order to access government hospitals and engage their counselors on the platform to provide more broader service even online. This project is to support the communities and youths get support freely, cheaply and at all times.

This project comes in a good season when the Government plans to set up mental health centers in all sub-region to have the young people of this country get support. This in their plans are physical but our project acts as a good catalyst as when this commences, we will partner with the government to have these services reach the last mile by providing their details on the platform so that one can reach out to a counselor closes to them.

The project hopes to create a big advocate for mental health for youth in this country. As online services are always fast, secure and very effective when used well. And it is our promise to the users.

• Hope to implement AI and Machine Learning in the system and Natural language processing and data on counselor capacity to optimize how they allocate texters to counselors. With a goal  of reducing wait times while still ensuring effective communication deescalation.
• Hope to have all National Mental Health Civil Officers uploaded on the system to allow users from all over Uganda reach out to their respective counselor. Which can be achieved by frequent meeting with the ministry of health in Uganda.
• Have the app working in the different main languages in the country to help the local people understand well.
• Reach out to receiving 4,000 messages from different users.
• Create more productive partnerships to help make the project reach the last mile with a great impact. Achieving this through sensitization, community outreaches, radio programs and more.
• Have to reach more volunteer and program operations. 

The technology we are employing is a Web and Mobile Application with AI and Machine Learning capabilities using natural Language processing to optimize how wastage times.

Mobile Application using firebase for other processing and storage. Web application uses internet for one to access connection. It requires that there be the one  in danger and a counselor for the effective use of this technologies.

We plan to reach over 10,000 people through social media advertisement, radio talk show, Televisions etc As we have started to do on a pilot surevey and now the solution is serving two main institution in central Uganda, Kyambogo University and Uganda Information and Communication technology. This has been viewed by over 56 views of the article and blogs a day.

Financial, Inadequate counselors, Inadequate partners in the business

We partner with Uganda Institute of Information and Communication Technologies for better user friendly technology testing.

Partner with National Innovation Hub providing the platform/space for more internet research and workspace for the team.

We partner with KaKebe Technologies Limited on app development and testing programs. http://www.kakebe.com/

We hope to reach out to Uganda National Mental Health Association. A body set by and managed by the central government on issues of mental healthcare.

Walok Helpline provides free, 24/7, high-quality web and mobile-based mental health support and crisis intervention by empowering a community of trained counselors to support people in their moments of need. It is a non-profit project which we uphold by offering counseling sessions to the young people in Uganda and other adults in crisis. 

Web platform enables the users to access right resources from well train individuals through articles and blogs we share, they are able to access success stories on mental health disorders and watch prevention measures and exercises that are on our platform. 

We are able to generate revenue firstly by attaching ads to our articles and blogs which with many users reading and engaging with the ads, we are able to be supported. The ads are not to be very compelling ads but mild user friendly ads, on the blogs, articles and you tube channels.

Being a non-profit project, we projects to partner with stakeholders who in turn will fund our programs. Stakeholders like the Central Government, other international organisations to be in position to provide a safe and good counseling session remotely.

With the growing amount of data that we will collect over time, it intend to apply machine learning and AI to help us process these data and from it, we develop a toolkit which we will be able to sell these packages to individuals and cooperate bodies to generate income.

With a high rate of criminal activities, addictions and gender-based violence attributed from high rate of depression in communities today, there is much need for a cheaper, easy mental health support in this country.

As a start-up project and a non-profit project we plan to gain revenue from ads attached to our blogs and articles. 

We plan to run a fundraiser programs once each financial year to help boost and fund the programs.

Reaching out to potentials donors and stakeholders such as the government and other international organisation which aims to support mental health well being and promoting well economically strong communities.

We plan in the near future with the big amount of data collected over time from members, we hope to process this data and design a good mental health support module like toolkit which can be sold and revenue gained. Not only that, with a right amount of clear research information from the data collected, these toolkit will be used to train cooperate bodies on their account to pay for the sessions, in tern, generating income and supporting our programs.