We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve been selected as a winner of the 2024 Amazon Web Services (AWS) IMAGINE Grant, a public grant awarded to non-profit organisations that are using cloud technology as a central tool to achieve their mission. The grant will enable us to significantly enhance our data capabilities and build upon our unique, UK-wide dataset on the mental health of people aged 25 and under to bring real-time, data-driven insight to the sector at an unprecedented scale.
Mental Health Innovations’ successful application comes in the wake of our merger with youth mental health charity The Mix. Sitting alongside our existing text messaging support service Shout, The Mix further bolsters our free, 24/7 digital support services for millions of young people across the UK who are struggling with their mental health and wellbeing, many of whom are from marginalised communities.
As part of the program, AWS was seeking proposals for big ideas on how to leverage cloud technology in new and innovative ways to accelerate impact in local and global communities. Mental Health Innovations was named a winner in the ‘Go Further, Faster’ category, which recognises highly innovative projects using advanced cloud services. We will receive a combination of unrestricted funding, cloud computing credits and engagement with AWS technical specialists. Proposals were judged on several factors including the innovative and unique nature of the project, impact on mission-critical goals, and clearly defined outcomes and milestones.
As Mental Health Innovations looks to further enhance our range of free, accessible mental health support and tools, the grant will enable us to develop the current functionality of our existing AWS-based analytics platform and utilise AWS services to introduce new reports, dashboards and insights, offering more comprehensive analytics.
We will also be developing a deeper understanding of The Mix and Shout datasets, identifying trends, and improving service design. This will allow us to start combining lessons learned from The Mix with insights from Shout, including trends on volunteer engagement and service improvement. We will be able to surface broader population insights to generate a comprehensive overview of mental health trends across diverse groups in the UK and not only enhance our services but also influence national policy-making and service design.
