Observed annually on October 10, World Mental Health Day raises awareness of mental health issues and mobilizes action to improve mental health care worldwide. This year’s campaign calls on governments, service providers, employers, and communities to ensure that people with lived experience (PWLE) of mental health conditions help shape the services, workplaces, and policies intended to support them.
Institutions such as the World Federation for Mental Health (WFMH) and the World Health Organization (WHO) emphasize that meaningful engagement must go beyond listening. It should create genuine opportunities for people to influence policy, co-design services, strengthen peer-led approaches, challenge stigma, and hold systems accountable.
When lived experience is recognized as a vital form of expertise, mental health systems are more likely to become person-centered, rights-based, and responsive to people’s needs. Lived experience offers knowledge and understanding that cannot be gained through study or observation alone.
For children in crisis, this principle is not abstract. When children live through conflict, displacement, loss, or uncertainty, the impact is not always visible. A child may have food to eat and a roof overhead yet still carry fear, grief, and anxiety they do not have the words to express. That silence matters. It may represent a lived experience no one has thought to ask about – and one no one is hearing.
At BLOOM, helping children has never meant meeting only their immediate needs. It also means creating moments of joy and normalcy in circumstances that feel anything but normal. For a child in crisis, emotional well-being is not separate from survival; it is part of it.
Whether in orphanages, shelters, displacement camps, hospitals, or remote villages, BLOOM strives to meet children with dignity and care through a holistic approach to healing. We create spaces for connection, guidance, play, and community.
A safe playground becomes more than a place to play. A shared meal becomes more than nourishment. A creative activity, a game, a book, or a few hours spent laughing with other children can offer something essential: a reminder that childhood still belongs to them.
A child who is safe but not allowed to be a child is not yet well. For a child who has seen too much, play is not a break from what happened; it is one way they begin to work through it – without needing the words and without being asked to explain. Safe spaces give children somewhere to set down the weight they carry. What they can find there is hope.
By investing in safe spaces and meaningful experiences, BLOOM is not only creating happiness today; we are building resilience for tomorrow. One of our founding beliefs is that helping a child heal begins with something as simple – and as powerful – as giving them a safe place to be a child.
Our journey began in 2017 with a small but meaningful pilot project: BLOOM’s first Play Garden, established at an orphanage in Meknes, Morocco. Since then, we have built 12 playgrounds, including Morocco’s first handicap-accessible playground in Casablanca. Together, these spaces have provided more than 24,000 children with safe, nurturing environments where they can play, grow, and thrive.
Over the past nine years, BLOOM has hosted more than 250 enrichment programs across Morocco, Egypt, and Gaza. With the support of generous donors, more than $1 million has been raised and distributed to communities in need. In Gaza and Palestine alone, BLOOM has provided more than 2 million meals and 2 million liters of water.
BLOOM is deeply grateful to the doctors and other medical professionals who have generously volunteered their time and expertise, particularly in support of our programs in Gaza. Their courage, compassion, and service have brought care, comfort, and hope to children and families experiencing profound hardship.
Most recently, Dr. Nada Mallick, a children’s critical care physician, conducted a medical mission in Gaza and visited BLOOM-sponsored displacement camp. Her visit deserves special recognition. The warmth of the reception she received – and the joy her presence brought to people living in the camps – reflected the power of compassionate care and human connection in even the most difficult circumstances.
Through the dedication of volunteers and local partners, BLOOM has created opportunities for joy, play, self-expression, learning, and emotional healing for children in displacement camps and conflict-affected communities across Palestine, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.
In Morocco, BLOOM’s largest project is a Play Garden and community gathering space in Agafay, in the Atlas Mountains. It was created following the devastating September 2023 earthquake, and the space now serves communities across approximately 100 small villages in the region.
In Gaza, BLOOM established an on-the-ground presence and began consistently providing hot meals, potable water, fresh produce, clothing, and mental health programs and workshops for children in displacement camps. Teams have worked across Gaza, from Rafah and Khan Younis to central Gaza, Gaza City, and the north.
Despite mass displacement, severe resource shortages, restricted access, damaged infrastructure, and rapidly changing conditions, BLOOM’s teams have continued to listen to communities, respond to evolving needs, and find ways to reach children and families
BLOOM’s commitment to children’s mental health also extends to Afghanistan through its partnership with Amena Mobile Clinic, a humanitarian nonprofit that delivers essential health care and medicines to vulnerable families.
Together, BLOOM and Amena Mobile Clinic launched a children’s mental health initiative that local partners have described as introducing forms of care previously unavailable to many children. The partnership has also created moments of comfort and celebration. During Eid 2026, the teams delivered toys to children facing difficult circumstances and distributed gifts to approximately 120 hospitalized children at Ataturk Hospital. Volunteer groups extended the outreach to seven tribal communities, reaching more than 700 children.
At BLOOM, we believe healing extends beyond meeting basic needs. Food, clean water, shelter, clothing, and medical care are essential, but children deserve more than survival. They deserve the opportunity to heal, laugh, play, dream, and thrive. They deserve adults who understand that a safe place to be a child is not a pause in recovery – it is part of recovery.
The journey continues because, beyond every statistic, project, and milestone, we see a child: a beacon of hope and untapped potential.
Sanaa Aijaz
Author