My LiA led me to start a nonprofit, and now I’m looking for volunteers
What began as my 2024 LiA project in Cape Town, South Africa, has grown into HaHaHelps, a nonprofit using improv comedy to support young people living in residential care.
During my LiA, I worked with young people at SOS Children’s Villages Cape Town, which supports children and adolescents without adequate parental care or at risk of losing it. Many young people in residential care have experienced family separation, instability, neglect, abuse, abandonment, or other significant adversity.
My project explored whether structured improvisation, play, and reflection could offer another way of supporting their psychosocial wellbeing, particularly their confidence, communication, emotional expression, social connection, and ability to cope with uncertainty.
I kept working on the programme after my LiA ended.
Since then, HaHaHelps has reached 63 young people through five workshop cycles, and what began as a summer project has developed into something I hope to continue building for the long term.
I’m now based in Cape Town, completing my master’s in psychology at the University of Cape Town, where I’m continuing to develop and research the programme. My current work is helping me better understand how a comedy-based psychosocial intervention like HaHaHelps can be delivered effectively in residential care settings and how it might eventually be expanded to reach more young people.
As HaHaHelps enters its next stage, I’m also starting to build the team and community around it.
We’re currently looking for volunteers who might be interested in contributing in areas including fundraising and partnerships, research and data, social media and digital storytelling, photography and videography, and programme support.
I would especially love to involve fellow Laidlaw Scholars and alumni. Whether you have experience or expertise you would like to contribute, want to get involved directly, or know someone who might be a good fit, I would really appreciate the support.
You can learn more about HaHaHelps here:
https://hahahelps.org/
More information about getting involved:
https://hahahelps.org/get-involved
If you’re interested in volunteering, you can register your interest here:
https://forms.cloud.microsoft/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=kod_UB9EQkSVwVjYUod6GRTqbjwZ50FCiJFbqogezCBUNFJLRTE4WTJaSEMzOTVQMEIzMFVPTjlPQiQlQCN0PWcu&route=shorturl
It’s been incredibly meaningful to see something that began with my Leadership-in-Action project continue growing well beyond that first summer. I’m very grateful for the role Laidlaw played in making that first project possible, and I’m excited to see where HaHaHelps goes next.
Hello! I’m a psychology researcher and the founder of HaHaHelps, a nonprofit organisation developing and delivering a comedy-based psychosocial programme designed to support young people in residential care.
I am currently completing an MSocSci in Psychology at the University of Cape Town, where my dissertation examines the feasibility of HaHaHelps programme with adolescents in South African child and youth care centres. My broader interests include youth mental health, psychosocial intervention development, implementation, participatory approaches, and the use of humour and play to support connection, emotional expression, self-efficacy, and coping with uncertainty.
HaHaHelps grew out of my Laidlaw Leadership-in-Action project at SOS Children’s Villages in Cape Town, where I designed and facilitated an improv-comedy programme for adolescents. Since then, I have continued developing and delivering the programme with young people in residential care and am now studying how it can be refined, evaluated, and ultimately adapted for use in other communities and settings.
Before this, my Laidlaw research at the University of Toronto examined relationships between childhood adversity, aggression, and self-regulation.
I’d love to connect with other Laidlaw Scholars and alumni interested in youth mental health, social impact, intervention development, social entrepreneurship, or simply finding creative ways to turn research into something useful in the world.
