A call to action

“Balai Lagai” is an age-old Kashmiri expression of care, commitment, love, and endless self-giving, most often used by mothers to care for and express love for their young ones.

Supporting Always Wholeheartedly All Broken-Hearted (SAWAB) and Kashmir Care Foundation (KCF) have collaborated to extend the principles, values, and sentiments of “Balai Lagai” to communicate the concepts of mental resilience through age- and target-specific manuals on anxiety and depression, with a hope that they will become every day and consulting reading materials for addressing the present and clear threat of mental health of all of us, irrespective of who we are and where we live.

Today, children, young adults, parents, and employees in Kashmir are growing up amid complex social, emotional, and environmental stressors. Rising levels of anxiety, depression, trauma-related distress, targeting outside because of who they are, substance use, and digital addiction increasingly threaten their psychological well-being, academic success, and overall quality of life.

While cognizant of the severity of the problem, and understand that our students, families, schools, and communities are often ill-equipped with culturally relevant preventive tools to address these challenges holistically.

In response, SAWAB and the KCF have developed evidence-informed Self-Care Mental, Emotional, and Social Wellness Manuals. Some of these manuals are available on the Kashmir Care Foundation website (www.kashmircarefoundation.org), and they offer practical guidance rooted in science, creativity, experience, and community wisdom to help children, youth, and adults reconnect with their inner strengths and external support systems.

This initiative recognises that mental well-being is not solely a clinical issue, but a shared social responsibility. The future manuals will speak to students who procrastinate and do not focus on preparing for exams. The manuals will also address employers and supervisors who discriminate against their reportees based on gender, religious or economic status. The actions of these employers and supervisors cause anxiety and tension at the personal level (for employees) and create a dysfunctional work culture and environment.

Families must reevaluate their reliance on digital pacifiers, educators must reimagine learning environments, and policymakers must prioritize holistic child development. To achieve sustained impact, these manuals should be widely disseminated and embedded in everyday family life, education systems, community structures, and governance.

We aspire to have a generation of children and youth in Kashmir who are emotionally resilient, socially connected, mentally healthy, and empowered to lead fulfilling lives through the dissemination of Self-Care Mental, Emotional, and Social Wellness Manuals and their integration into families, schools, communities, and policy frameworks across Kashmir.

Our fivefold objectives are to:

1) make self-care knowledge and practices accessible to children, youth, parents, and educators across diverse settings

2) promote emotional resilience, healthy coping skills, and positive social behaviours

3) reduce the risks of anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and digital addiction among children and youth

4) foster collaboration between families, schools, NGOs, and communities for collective child wellbeing

5) ask employers and supervisors of small and big institutions to operate with fair practice of governance, so that there is no discrimination based on gender, marital, religion, or economic status of employees; and

6) integrate holistic mental wellness teaching approaches within Kashmir’s education and child development systems.

The information we have prepared is designed for children and adolescents, youth and young adults as primary stakeholders, and the parents and caregivers, teachers, school counsellors, and educators, school administrators, community leaders, NGOs, and policymakers and political authorities as secondary, but equally important, stakeholders.

We recommend an approach that engages families, schools, students, and communities as equal partners for sustained engagement, designed to provide parents with orientation and awareness on emotional well-being, mindful parenting, and healthy digital habits. For this to be successful, we should have home-based self-care toolkits adapted from the manuals, community support circles to encourage shared learning and reflection, and guidance materials available in local languages to ensure inclusivity and equity.

Through the collective efforts of all stakeholders, we can achieve an increased emotional awareness, resilience, and self-regulation among children and youth, improved parent-child relationships and family wellbeing, more supportive and inclusive school environments, reduced stigma around mental health and help-seeking, and a stronger collaboration between education systems, communities, and policymakers.

SWAB and KCF would like to issue a call to action, urging parents, educators, policymakers, artists, environmentalists, community leaders, and businesses and institutions to unite to protect childhood and nurture healthy minds and bodies. When we do it well and at scale, we will ensure children’s well-being and foundation, fostering a peaceful and thriving society.

By expanding the reach of these self-care manuals and embedding them within everyday life, SAWAB and KCF seek to ignite a collective movement—one that restores balance, strengthens resilience, and ensures that every child in Kashmir has the opportunity to grow, learn, and flourish.

We invite the community of students, young adults, parents, teachers, employers, business leaders, policymakers, and political leaders to join our efforts and collaborate with us to build a reliable and resilient society.

Mushtaq Margoob, Supporting Always Wholeheartedly All Broken-Hearted (SAWAB), and Altaf Lal, Kashmir Care Foundation (KCF)