Some success stories stay with you. StrongMinds is one of them.

In just a decade, StrongMinds has grown from a small initiative in Uganda into a powerful force tackling Africa’s mental health crisis.

They’ve now reached over 900,000 women. 🎉

It’s organisations like them that remind me why I do this work.

So, how did they go from an idea to impact at such scale?

It’s taken a decade of bold decisions, mindset shifts, and strategic pivots—constantly evolving how they work to meet the scale of the problem.

Let’s break it down in detail below 👇  Not just to cheer them on (though, go team!), but so the rest of us can steal—ahem, learn—from their success.

We supported them early on, and this is how they’ve progressed through our ‘Journey to Scale’ framework.

2014–2018

2019–2022

2023–Present

How to apply their approach in your organisation:

✅ Don’t scale the work → scale the way it works.

StrongMinds shifted their model to empower others and embed mental health support into existing systems.

✅ Evidence matters → so does iteration.

From early pilots to recent RCTs, they never stopped testing and adapting. Scale didn’t come from one leap. It came from many smart refinements.

✅ Governments aren’t the endgame → they’re part of the journey.

StrongMinds partnered early with public systems. That made government ownership possible before scaling was complete, and the transition smoother.

✅ Keep cost in focus → without cutting corners.

Their six-week model, validated by research, proved you can lower costs and expand reach without sacrificing quality.

✅ The doer-to-enabler shift is hard → but worth it.

Evolving from implementer to field-builder helped them reach 10x more people than direct delivery alone.

900k isn’t the end of the road for StrongMinds. But it’s a powerful milestone and we’re proud to have played a part in their journey.

Download the framework here to use it in your strategy discussion with your team.

If you’re ready to start your own journey, all the tools necessary are here.

To go more in-depth on how StrongMinds used it, read their story here.