My name is Youness Robert-Tahiri, and when I was a teenager, I fled an abusive home and became homeless. Comedy saved my life. Now, I’m trying to turn what helped me survive into something that can help other young people facing adversity.

For more than a decade, I’ve worked with children and teenagers, including teaching comedic improv in Toronto. Those experiences eventually became the foundation for HaHaHelps — a comedy-based psychosocial programme that uses play, connection and guided reflection to help young people express difficult emotions, connect with others, build confidence and practise navigating uncertainty and mistakes.

In 2024, I brought this work to South Africa through the competitive Laidlaw Leadership and Research Scholarship, completing my international leadership project at SOS Children’s Villages in Cape Town. I returned in 2025 and continued developing HaHaHelps through several additional cohorts of young people in residential care.

During that first programme, 10 of the 15 participating teenagers were successfully reunified with their families, and SOS staff consistently described HaHaHelps as an important contributor to changes they saw in emotional regulation, relationships and how young people approached reunification. Across the programmes that followed, I continued seeing how humour could create an unusually low-pressure space for young people to connect, take interpersonal risks and talk about things that were otherwise difficult to discuss.

Where HaHaHelps is now

A lot has changed since I originally launched this fundraiser.

In 2025, I graduated with High Distinction from the University of Toronto with an Honours BSc in Psychology Research. In February 2026, I began an MSocSci in Psychology at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

HaHaHelps is now the focus of my master’s dissertation.

I am currently conducting a mixed-methods feasibility study of HaHaHelps with adolescents in residential care across two South African provinces, with research in Cape Town and Gqeberha. The study is examining whether the programme is feasible and acceptable, how young people experience it, how it can be improved, and preliminary changes across psychosocial outcomes.

In other words, HaHaHelps has moved from an idea and a series of promising programmes into something that is now being formally studied, documented and refined.

And the people who donated to this fundraiser helped make that possible.

What your support has already helped build

Money raised through this campaign is already helping cover:

What additional donations will support

The remaining funding will primarily help complete the foundation needed for HaHaHelps to grow responsibly, including:

I am also exploring the most sustainable long-term structure for HaHaHelps, potentially combining a social-impact pathway with revenue-generating partnerships that can help subsidise the broader mission.

The goal of this fundraiser is to help build that foundation. Over time, I want future growth to increasingly come through research funding, grants, organisational partnerships and earned revenue, so individual donations can help us reach this next stage without having to finance every future stage of HaHaHelps.

Why this matters

Young people living through adversity often need more support than existing systems can provide.

Conventional mental-health services can be expensive, difficult to access or simply uncomfortable for some young people. And in many residential and community settings, access to specialist mental-health professionals is limited.

HaHaHelps was built to explore another way in.

Sessions use comedic improvisation, play and guided reflection. Young people might spend one moment making each other laugh through an absurd improv game and the next talking about what it feels like to make a mistake, speak in front of other people, express an emotion or not know what comes next.

The comedy lowers the pressure.

The psychosocial work happens through the experience.

My long-term question is simple:

Can we develop a form of psychosocial support that is evidence-based, engaging, culturally adaptable, affordable and realistic to deliver in the communities that need it?

Building toward scale

I want HaHaHelps to grow far beyond the programmes I can personally deliver. But scaling responsibly means first building evidence, refining the intervention, developing strong partnerships and understanding exactly what should — and should not — be replicated.

That is the stage we are in now. Over time, I hope to develop a model that can train others to deliver HaHaHelps and partner with organisations serving young people across different communities.

The project has already received media coverage from CBC News, Global News, CP24, CityNews, the Toronto Star, and Heart FM Cape Town.

What began as an idea shaped by my own experience is now an active research programme being studied across two provinces in South Africa.

If you believe in what HaHaHelps is building, a donation or share will help us complete this next stage of research and development.

Thank you to everyone who has helped get HaHaHelps this far. You were there at the beginning — and you are helping build the evidence and infrastructure that could allow it to go much further.

Learn more: https://www.hahahelps.org

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