In November 2023, Stijn de Leeuw had the honour to give a keynote address about the community perspective on the importance of early life mental health programmes and research at the Healing the Brain conference hosted by the AKU Brain & Mind Institute in Nairobi, Kenya. Stijn is a PhD Candidate at UCT Psychology Department, under the supervision of A/Prof Susan Malcolm-Smith. Stijn is busy writing up his final chapters for his PhD thesis, titled ‘Investigating protective factors that boost resilience in a South African birth cohort study’. In 2020 he also founded the organisation Little Lions Child Coaching, which is committed to helping children in townships around Cape Town by offering daily, free, mental health workshops to children between the ages of 8-13. These workshops are given by so-called mental health coaches, local role models from the townships who have been trained by and employed by The Little Lions Academy. Little Lions is now active in 4 locations around Cape Town and 3 locations in Kenya, making 2,000 children mentally stronger every year. In 2024 Stijn will be conducting a big community research project, testing out the effectiveness of the Little Lions programme on a large scale, and assessing the needs and beliefs of the larger community on the topic of mental health even further. This research will be integrated as a final chapter of his PhD research on resilience in young children in LMICs.