Tom Osborn 

Mental health problems though untalked about, though stigmatized, were really prevalent by some estimates put it that almost one in two adolescents in Kenya struggle with some sort of a mental health problem. The effects of these problems are very profound, right? So they affect how you see yourself, how you interact with your friends and family and go through school. They will affect whether you can get a job in the future, health outcomes, etc. Yet truth, as I was saying, quite untalked about and quite stigmatized. And so that also led me to think that this was a great place to work.

Paul Meunier 

Hello, I'm Paul Meunier, the executive director of the Youth Intervention Programs Association, and I'm a youth worker at heart. How lucky am I, I have the privilege to meet youth workers from around the globe and learn their stories and share them with the entire world. I'm glad you're listening because together we'll learn how their life experiences shape their youth work. As you listen, I encourage you to consider how your experiences shape what you have to offer young people. Welcome to this edition of The Passionate Youth Worker. Hi, everybody. For this episode, we're joined by Tom Osborn from Nairobi, Kenya. He is the co-founder and CEO of Shamiri Institute, which means thrive in Kiswahili. Tom is dedicated to systems change in his country. And his organization is committed to improving the mental health of young people that he cares so much about. Tom, thanks for being a guest on the podcast.

Tom Osborn 

Thank you so much for having me, Paul. I'm really excited for this conversation.

Paul Meunier 

I am too, Tom. I share your excitement. Tom, you're a relatively young person yourself, at least compared to my age. But you started this organization that is trying to solve this big problem in your country. How did you decide this is something you wanted to do?

Tom Osborn 

Just as you said I'm a very young person. And that makes sense, because Kenya is a very young country. The median age in the country is 19. And that's the same across most similar African countries. And so I think that this is the greatest opportunity or challenge of my generation. So if we can provide pathways to independent living for this very youthful population, then you have a great opportunity on our hands. But at the same time, if we can't be able to do this, then we have a really big challenge as well. So I found this to be a really big bold problem to think about and to try to solve. And, yeah, that's why I working in this space and trying to do something about youth mental health.

Paul Meunier 

To me, it's impressive Tom, that you're looking for something that's big enough and bold enough to take on as a career or life challenge. I'm so inspired by that. I'd like to dive into that a little bit more. But I'd like to back up a little bit Tom, and talk about your early years, your childhood. What was your growing up experience like? Did you have a lot of pressure on you to be super successful in your life?

Tom Osborn 

So I was born and raised in rural Kenya, it's a small sugarcane community. And growing up in the community, there was very limited pathways and opportunities towards independent living or doing something with your life. And one of those opportunities or paths that existed was education and academics. And so the path was, you do well in school, well you go to a good secondary school outside of the village, you go to university, and then you have a path to being able to lift your family and yourself out of the village, out of poverty. And so that was the backdrop that I found myself growing up in. And so there was a lot of pressure on me, my siblings and my peers growing up to be able to succeed academically, you know, because this was the only path that we had access to be able to, like, make something out of our lives.

Paul Meunier 

Yeah. So your parents, really were focused on your education and committed to making sure that you got the education. Are your parents educated as well? Did they go to secondary school or college? Can you talk a little bit about your mom and dad?

Tom Osborn 

Yes, my parents were also born and raised around the same place that I was raised. So my dad went on through high school but didn't go through university. My mom didn't finish high school. Unfortunately, when she was being raised up, it was a time when you know, female education was not as valued, I would say, and so for both of them and more specifically for my mom they see my education as an extension of their education. You know and so one thing my mom tells me a lot is "I wasn't able to go to high school, and so I am going to high school through you." And that kind of set the tone, you know. So the pressure was not only for myself to try and make something out of my own life, but you know, also to give my parents an opportunity to also be able, to some extent live their own dreams and aspirations through my life.

Paul Meunier 

Yeah, that's great. I can sense how that must be a little bit of extra pressure, having your mom vicariously go to school through you, but it seems like it's paid off because now you're doing incredible things for your country. We're all a product of our parents to some extent, what were your mom and dad like? Were they driven, were they dedicated? And are you more like your mom or dad?

Tom Osborn 

Yes. So both my parents were very strict about education, and very strict about giving me the platform and the opportunity to be able to have an education. And so what that meant, for example, is when I was what, eight or nine years old, I'm living away from my parents to going to, you know, public boarding school, because my parents thought that will best prepare me for the National Secondary School Entrance Exam, which basically determined a lot of my future life prospects. And so from both of my parents I think the main thing I learned from that was the idea of quote- unquote sacrifice. You know, I had to be willing to not stay with my family to have a shot of doing well in life. And they also had to make a lot of sacrifices to give me these opportunities. To your question of whether I'm like my dad or my mom, I think, depends on different things. I think from my mom, I have really picked up a lot of social skills, like I learned empathy, I learned the importance and value of community and selflessness and I think her life is the story of selflessness. I think from my dad, I've really learned discipline. He still runs like, you know, five kilometers every morning in his 60s, clearly a very disciplined person. So those are the kinds of things I've learned from the both of them.

Paul Meunier 

That's interesting. So you're a combination of the two. And Tom, I know your education was a real pressure cooker, that boarding school, they had high demands of you and really drilled you academically. And Tom we've met because I found your TED talk that you did. And I was just so impressed by that. We're going to post a link for your TED Talk in our show notes. So if people want to go see it, but was that hard on you to live and be in that pressure situation? Or did you find it helpful to learn to be so dedicated and committed?

Tom Osborn 

Yeah, I think, you know, growing up, you know, as we were going through that experience, you know, just to paint a picture for our readers. So, the nature of the Kenyan education system is that at the end of eighth grade there's a national examination that every student in the country takes and depending on how you rank on this exam, you will be admitted to different public secondary schools, depending on how you rank. And so some secondary schools, obviously were well-resourced ranked better than others. We have a more quote-unquote certain path towards, you know, going to university etc. So for many families, and especially families like mine, the pressures to do well in this end of primary school exam so you go to a good secondary school that basically puts you on the path towards success. And so as we were preparing for this exam, I'm going to be living the school for 9 to 10 months in a year. But the days are pretty long. So classes start at five in the morning and go up to 10pm. So it's pretty intense pressure cooker environment. But going through it how we saw this was that it was normal. It was just what it meant to grow up and get an education and come of age within this context, right. And obviously in hindsight that clearly trained us to be very disciplined and dedicated, etc. But going through it, we didn't see it as a quote-unquote traumatic experience, so very tough on us, socially, emotionally, behaviorally. In hindsight, you know, I can now see how this experience was to an extent really jarring and really not good for our mental or physical health, etc. But to answer your question, as we were just living through this experience it didn't feel unusual, and it was to some extent a badge of honor and going through that system and making it.

Paul Meunier 

Yeah, I can see how the discipline part of it, for sure would be really beneficial. So in this system of school that you were in, it was preparing you to be some sort of leader, some sort of person of status in your community. Was there like a given occupation that you were supposed to be? Was it a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer? I mean, was it expected you'd move into something like that? Because now you're helping young people. I wonder, was that one of the avenues you chose or did you have to kind of break away because it was different?

Tom Osborn 

Yes. So we had an acronym called DELL, the DELL, like the company, DELL. So the four options are you're either a doctor, engineer, lawyer or a loser.

Paul Meunier 

Oh, gosh, I hit on something I expected it would be like that. Yes.

Tom Osborn 

Yeah. But that was also the order of prestige. So like, doctor being the most prestigious. So when I was starting ninth grade, it was determined that I should be a lawyer, for two reasons. One, I really enjoyed writing. You know, growing up, I wanted to be a writer and a novelist. And I really loved language classes, etc. What that means is you have ninth grade, like the subjects you take, everything's lined up. So you know the goal is for me to go to University of Nairobi Law School, which is like the number one law school in Kenya. And I actually got an admission letter from the law school here in Nairobi. Though I never attended it was always like the plan for me. Yeah.

Paul Meunier 

And so you chose something else. So it really describes you as being kind of a non-traditional thinker, an outlier, somebody willing to take a chance on something else. When you could have gone down so many different paths why did you gravitate towards the well-being of young people in your country?

Tom Osborn 

Yeah, I think the first experiences that led me towards working for young people was working for my community in general, were experiences that I had growing up as well. So more specifically, with my mom in rural Kenya how we cook is you know we have firewood. We use firewood, or we use charcoal for cooking. And a consequence of that is a lot of emission of smoke and other particulates that clog people's respiratory tracts and it's actually one of the top killers of people in the developing world. And so in high school, my mom got diagnosed with a respiratory tract infection. That was like the first point in my life where I was like, I have been on this path towards being a lawyer and really working hard for myself, but importantly, for my family, and my mom is struggling with this problem. And I am not in a position to help right. I felt at that point was kind of a turning point in my life, I realized that my education was great, but it will be better if I could use it towards helping people that I care about and people who have allowed me the opportunity to be where I am. So that was like the first turning point in my life towards doing community-oriented work. And then it evolved over time. So the first experience was when I was a freshman in high school, our class was about 200 students. By the time I was a senior, the incoming freshman class was about 600 students, it had almost grown three times but the resources were the same. So same classroom, same everything. So this will be more crammed living, more difficult. And at the same time, the opportunities outside of high school, were not growing the same way. So one example is, for some reason, when we do the end of secondary school examinations, they have the amount of students who can pass because they only have so much slots in the universities. So you had to be part of that. What appeared to me to be a challenge was that all of us are growing up knowing that, okay, we need to go to high school, we need to do well, academically, we need to be doctors, engineers, or lawyers. But now there is three-x as many people competing for still the same amount of similar resources that seemed to me that the number of quote-unquote losers is going to kind of like drastically increase, right. And so that was like the first realization made me just think that there will be a lot of opportunity to do something meaningful and impactful towards young people in Kenya.

Paul Meunier 

Wow. Well, that's great that you saw that problem and you're trying to solve it and give people the support they need. Tom, we're about halfway through our interview. So we need to take a short break. We'll be right back just a minute.

Jade Schleif 

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Paul Meunier 

Tom, right before the break, you were telling us about your first time you saw the need to really dive in to help young people. But yet, you didn't just say okay, I see this problem. You were looking for something that was big and bold, and you decided to attack mental health as the strategy to help young people. Why mental health? Why did you take that on? Why not just figure out how to better the education system or provide people entrepreneurial skills, but you chose to go after the well-being, the mental health of young people. Can you talk about why that path?

Tom Osborn 

Yes, I think there are three reasons that made me think that this would be the most effective way of doing this. The first is, when I look back at my experiences for example in my community we have something called an age group, like people were born around the same year, for example, the days you go through school together, etc, etc. Same age group. I think there were about 12 of us. And only I think two of us graduated through high school, and I was the only one graduating to university. And it wasn't because you know, I was the smartest or the most qualified, etc. I think I was able to quote-unquote, make it for two reasons. One was I was lucky that at particular inflection points in my life where I could have given up, I had people who intervened in my life. Where they intervened not through you know like buying books, or you know, taking me through programming, but like psychosocially. I also realized through my experience, and eventually it was reinforced through studying that a lot of time, especially for young people who are like malleable and still have a lot of really great dreams and visions about the future if you can intervene to help them build resilience, kind of strengthen their mindset, then you can improve their motivation, then the effects are profound and go beyond just academics. They can extend as well to if they decide to do entrepreneurial ventures or you know, decide to go into the arts, etc. So the first thing. Second thing is just a realization that mental health problems though untalked about, though stigmatized, were really prevalent. I think some estimates put it that almost one in two adolescents in Kenya struggle with some sort of a mental health problem. Wow. The effects of these problems are very profound, right. So they affect how you see yourself how you interact with your, you know, friends and family and go through school. They'll affect whether you can get a job in the future, health outcomes, etc. Yet, as I was saying, quite untalked about and quite stigmatized. And so that also led me to think that this was a great place to work. And finally, this is the great opportunity for building and structuring the space because it's so young and so new they're very few people working around mental health. And so we have this opportunity to make mental health as we want it. You know, we have this opportunity to build from the ground and especially in being like youth work here is a great opportunity where you don't have to, you know, be fighting the system or the establishment and it's just a clean slate, a blank canvas to build upon.

Paul Meunier 

That's great. You sure have thought through this and it seems like you've made the right decision and you're picking up on something that seems so critical. Tom, as you've built Shamiri Institute, what have you learned about yourself facing the challenges, the struggles, the pushback you might get, the funding that you need, all these kinds of things. What have you learned about yourself through that process?

Tom Osborn 

Yeah, I think one thing that I struggle with and I'm sure you know, a lot of people who work in similar settings and so much of the struggle with is, the more you do this work, the more you realize things about yourself that you may not really like. Working in the caregiving space, in the mental health space I realized, for example, that I often put the health and well-being of other people before my own, and it's more of like a giving rather than a receiving or a taking from culture. And one of the things that I've realized that I think I need to work on is I've realized that I haven't given myself enough opportunities to grow and make mistakes and find myself quote-unquote, you know. And for just realizing that I have spent so much time trying to build something and thinking about other people, and other actions that are not fully investing a lot of time and resources on my own is being like aware and mindful of where I am. Yeah, and I think this is, that's one thing that I've realized that I need to work on. I think one of the things I've realized in the course of this work is just how much resilience we have. Sometimes, you know, like, there's just so much burden and so much bad things happening in people's lives, that, you know, you have to help them deal with them. And, of course, that also affects you and your life. And just realizing how strong I am sometimes being able to navigate this and find strength to continue doing things I've kind of surprised myself in that regard. If I may say.

Paul Meunier 

Yeah, you know, I've interviewed so many people for this podcast now. And that is probably one of the most common denominators of youth workers is that we take pride in other people doing well. And we're so focused on the success of other people that we forget about ourselves sometimes. And so to hear you say that is just so real, because that is a bigger problem I think in our field than we give credit to. We need to figure out how to take care of ourselves because we can't help other people and solve problems if we're not whole ourselves and complete ourselves. Tom, are there things you do to improve that? Have you I don't know, tried to be intentional about your own well-being and your own success. Have you taken steps to try to do that? Or are you just so engrossed and so in a growth phase and developmental phase that you just don't have time to do that?

Tom Osborn 

Yeah, I think it's easier said than done, you know, because just like the realities of running a startup, working in these spaces there are like new problems every day that demand attention, and often seem more pressing, and higher quote-unquote, in the hierarchy of needs, and, you know, kind of my own. So, yes, I think to be honest, like, you know, I haven't been able to find that balance yet. I think what I've been doing is starting to reignite the things that I enjoy doing, you know, so as I told you, at the beginning, I wanted to be a writer and so I'm carving on more time to, you know, to write and to kind of try and reignite that passion and that connection. That's one of the things I'm doing to start allowing myself opportunities are moments to start engaging with other things that I enjoy and find satisfaction in besides, you know, obviously the work that we're doing at Shamiri.

Paul Meunier 

Well, good luck to you. And I certainly can appreciate and relate with how it's easier said than done, I can definitely connect with that statement. Tom, I can't believe we're out of time already. But I want to thank you for being so willing to take a big and bold chance to help 1000s if not hundreds of 1000s if maybe someday not millions of young people by addressing their mental health needs through a creative approach that we didn't even have time to get into. But again, I'm going to put your TED talk in the show notes for this episode so that people can go watch that. It's so inspiring, what you do and for your age and your dedication and just drive and courage to solve a problem and make mental health in your country the way you think it needs to be solved, is so inspirational. And I just want to thank you for all the work that you do and all the work you're going to do. So keep going, Tom.

Tom Osborn 

Thank you so much, Paul, for having me. And yeah, I'm also a really big fan of this podcast. And I think it's really great to listen to stories of other like youth workers, young people working for young people. Looking forward to, you know, maybe coming back again in the future. But, you know, just to encourage other people to continue with youth work. It's not always the most you know fancy, or most beautiful work but it's quite impactful and meaningful and sets people I believe on a pathway that influences the outcomes of their lives beyond just when you work with them. Yes.

Paul Meunier  

Tom, I always like to give the guests the last word on their episode. What words of wisdom or inspiration would you like to leave with our listeners?

Tom Osborn 

Yeah, I think my final word will be to encourage the listeners to the extent that they can enjoy the process of youth work. Often, we are really interested in outcomes, you know, achieving this milestone, getting this thing off the to-do list. And because of that, we may not find ourselves really embracing the moment and embracing the process. And I think that's where the true satisfaction is, you know, being able to wake up every day to seize the day, and to just enjoy every part of the process of the work that we do. And so, yeah, that's my final word to the listeners today. The most value is from the process of the work that we're doing, and not the end goal, or outcome, or milestone.

Paul Meunier 

If you would like to share your passion for youth work, we'd love to spotlight you as a guest. If you have feedback about the show, please let us know. Just visit training.yipa.org That's training.yipa.org and click on the podcast tab. This podcast is made possible in part due to a generous contribution from M Health Fairview. I'm your host Paul Meunier. Thanks for listening to The Passionate Youth Worker.