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Updatescollectivetrust2026-06-28T13:00:57+05:30

TCT Annual report 2025

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We planned for a two hours session, but our stories had other plans. And honestly, who were we to interrupt?

Our October Wakhong turned out to be such a meaningful gathering that went well beyond our planned time, with no one in much of a hurry to leave. Perhaps that says something about what happens when people feel heard, when stories find space, and when listening becomes more than just waiting for our turn to speak.

This October, as we observe Mental Health Month with the theme “Lived Experiences Heard: Real Voices, Real Change,” we made space for people to share their own experiences, the struggles they have lived through, the efforts that helped them along the way, what stayed with them, and what they wish others understood.

We heard reflections on self-advocacy, finding one's voice, and the things people want to share with others who may be going through something similar.

We also took this opportunity to introduce the Youth-LEARN Fellowship by Sangath.
The fellowship brings us closer to an idea we deeply believe in: that people with lived experience must be at the heart of conversations and decisions about mental health and well-being.

The idea of lived experience may sound new to many of us, but the experiences themselves are not new. People have always lived through things that shape how they see the world, how they understand themselves, and how they find ways to keep going. These experiences hold knowledge that cannot always be learnt from books, classrooms, or professional training alone.
They are experts in their own lives, with insights that can help shape how we understand care, support one another, and advocate for change.

We look forward to creating more spaces for these conversations, for more sharing of experiences, and for lived experience to be recognised not as an afterthought, but as an essential part of mental health and well-being.

Wakhong has never been about learning how to be ourselves. We’ve always been ourselves here. The lived realities we carry, the things we rarely say out loud, the messy bits that don’t fit into neat little narratives; that’s what Wakhong has always made room for.
No fixing, no filtering, no pretending we have it all figured out.

This year’s World Mental Health Day theme,
“Lived Experiences Heard: Real Voices, Real Change,” speaks to something that has always been at the heart of Wakhong.

We’re gathering again on 25th October for this month’s Wakhong, to make space for real stories, honest conversations, and the experiences we don’t always get to share.

You are the expert of your own lived experience. You don’t need to have the right words, a solution, or a story that makes sense to everyone.
You just need to show up as you are.
We’re here to listen, not to judge or fix.
Come as you are. Your story has a place here.

DM for details and inquiry.

We appreciate that when mental health comes up, The Collective Trust is remembered.
It tells us that our work is being seen, and we welcome every effort to make mental health support more accessible.
We have always been open to collaboration, and we remain committed to building stronger pathways to care.

However, discovering that our personal phone numbers have been shared as mental health helpline contacts without our knowledge or consent is deeply disappointing.
The intent comes from a place of concern and helping but that did reflect lack of procedure, especially when we have been visibly around as an organisation.

Please remember us when mental health comes up. But please also remember that behind every contact number is a person, and behind every promise of help is a responsibility to someone who may desperately need it.

We must do better, not just at making mental health visible, but at making mental health support safe, accessible, and accountable.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience and specially to have disappointed some expectations because of this.

We are happy to share that Nitish Laipubam, has joined Sangath’s Youth-LEARN Fellowship.
The Collective Trust is honoured to be the host organisation, and we are formally inducted for the programme yesterday.

For us, this is more than a fellowship.
Nitish joined our team some months ago, with a lived-experience perspective, bringing to the forefront something we have been trying to hold close in our work where lived experience is knowledge, and people with lived experience must have a place in shaping mental health work.

Through Wakhong, Story Circles and our community work, we have been learning to listen differently and make space for lived experience. Youth-LEARN is giving us an opportunity to deepen that journey.

We are grateful to Sangath and the Youth-LEARN team for widening our vision, offering us new ways of thinking and, importantly, providing support to a young organisation like ours as we continue to learn and grow.

The timing feels especially meaningful as yesterday on the World Mental Health Day 2026, with its focus on “Lived experiences heard: real voices, real change” a room full of people and their experiences were heard and held.

October feels like a good beginning.
For our fellow Nitish. For us. And for the work we hope to keep building together.

Real voices. Shared learning. Meaningful change.

Some journeys begin with a project; some begin with a person. For The Collective Trust, our journey with MIWA began with Che Santa who is an old friend, a sister, and someone whose journey we have had the privilege of walking alongside.

From the very beginning, TCT has been present not to lead or interpret, but as an ally holding space, listening, and being there when the emotional and mental-health dimensions of the work needed care. Being part of a space created around trans and queer literature has felt deeply aligned with what we believe in: that people deserve the freedom to tell their own stories, in their own words, and on their own terms.

We were reminded through these workshops that literature can be a quiet form of healing. Writing does not erase pain, but it can give experience somewhere to go by allowing us to name, remember, question, imagine, and sometimes simply be witnessed.
The poems and writings gathered in this anthology carry identity, love, loss, anger, belonging, resistance and hope.

For us, this book is more than a collection of words; it is a record of voices that have always been here, creating, surviving and making meaning.
We are grateful to have walked alongside MIWA from the beginning, and to have witnessed these voices find their way onto the page and, now, into the world.
And the event that was, was how our own Pink Pony Club is created through MIWA in the words of @ms.vi0lets

@kaidongfam
@shaanba_arambam
@coffeeonsomedays
@xako_publication

September is special at TCT.

While suicide prevention and mental health are part of what we do throughout the year, September gives us another reason to pause, listen, and come together.

Among the many things we did this September, we had the privilege of holding a Wari Wayokon Story Circle at Bishnupur Loukoi Paat Relief Camp, around the theme of suicide.

Not to fix. Not to judge. Not to offer easy answers.
But simply to create a space where stories could be shared, heard, and held by the community.

Because we believe building community is also suicide prevention.

Grateful to everyone who showed up, listened, shared, and helped make this circle possible. And a special thank you to the incredible team behind Wari Wayokon for continuing to remind us that every person is more than the problems they carry.

Wari Wayokon is supported by BALM, in collaboration with The Collective Trust and MATAI Society as partners.

Mental health should not be portrayed through unscrupulous, stereotypical, or harmful depictions in films and Shumang Leela. Such portrayals can normalize misconceptions, reinforce stigma, and shape more negative and dangerous perceptions of mental health and those experiencing mental health difficulties. Creative representations have the power to influence how communities understand illness, care, and recovery and that responsibility matters.

Care and supportiveness are fundamental to mental health care. But we cannot romanticise care without asking who is expected to provide it, and at what cost.

Too often, the invisible labour of caring for someone through illness is disproportionately placed on women, as reflected in this Manipuri movie clip.

Care is essential. But care work is work. It must be recognised, shared, supported, and fairly distributed—not quietly assigned to women as an obligation.

This September, during Suicide Prevention Month, we were invited by the Maring Students’ Union to be part of a mental health awareness camp with students. We chose to keep the session interactive and conversational rather than PPT-heavy or lecture-based.

We explored everyday situations, thoughts, feelings, emotions, relationships, stress and support. Students were encouraged to question, respond, imagine situations and think about how they might respond when someone around them is struggling as an introductory to Psychological First Aid.

Looking back, it also made us reflect on what “Changing the Narrative on Suicide” can mean.
Perhaps suicide prevention is not only about warning signs, risk factors and statistics. It also lives in the conversations that happen much earlier: whether a young person has someone to talk to, whether a teacher notices a change, whether a parent can listen without immediately judging or fixing, whether a peer knows how to stay with someone who is struggling etc.

With the limited time we had, we could have made more space for an explicit conversation on suicide prevention and also the aftermath of Suicide. But that, too, is part of our learning. We are trying to unlearn a way of talking about suicide that separates it from the wider social, relational and psychosocial realities of people’s lives.

We are especially grateful to the Maring Students’ Union for creating space for psychologists and counsellors to be part of the front-facing mental health conversation. This is not about placing one profession above another. Mental health care needs a multidisciplinary approach, bringing together psychiatrists, psychologists, counsellors, social workers, teachers, parents, peers, community workers and people with lived experience.

We hope yesterday’s camp becomes the beginning of a longer engagement with the Maring Students’ Union.

We are still learning what it means to change the narrative. Perhaps it begins by asking not only how do we prevent suicide?
But also what kind of communities help people feel heard, supported, connected and able to seek help?

Wakhong Ya_all Chapter | Workplace Wellbeing & Reflective Practice

The Collective Trust held a Wakhong with the staffs of Ya_all, creating a dedicated space to pause, listen, reflect and speak about their workplace experiences.

This Wakhong was centred around workplace wellbeing, healthy organisational culture and mental health at work.

Our work on workplace wellbeing is part of a larger commitment to bringing mental health into the everyday structures and cultures of organisations. Building on the global conversation around Mental Health at Work, The Collective Trust has been actively working to introduce employee wellbeing into workplaces and explore how organisations can move towards more caring, reflective and sustainable systems.

Wakhong is a flagship initiative of The Collective Trust. What began in 2024 as a listening space has since taken many forms, adapting to different communities, groups and purposes. At its heart, however, remains the same belief: when people have safe spaces to listen and be heard, meaningful change can begin.

We hope that spaces like Wakhong can contribute, in small but meaningful ways, to systemic and structural shifts in how organisations understand care, wellbeing and the people who make up their workplaces.

And we would love to take this conversation to more workplaces.

***If your organisation is interested in creating a space for employee wellbeing, reflective practice and healthier workplace cultures, reach out to The Collective Trust to explore a Wakhong for your team.

Employee Wellbeing MentalHealth At Work Organisational Wellbeing Reflective Practice

This September, as we try to hold space for conversations around suicide and loss, we took a Story Circle into a relief camp at the Old DC Complex, Bishnupur.
This is part of our Wari Wayokon Project.

"What remains of a person after they are gone? " was the theme we chose to talk around through props.
The stories were not simple. They carried resistances... and grief, displacement, exhaustion, anger, structural failure and the many things people are still forced to carry. Not necessarily as explanations for suicide, but as realities of lives being lived in a difficult place.
The circle was not smooth.

We struggled to hold what emerged, and we are still sitting with what we could have done differently. But perhaps that is also part of the work.
To enter difficult spaces, to listen without pretending to have answers, and to stay with stories that cannot be neatly resolved.

This Suicide Prevention Month, we are trying, imperfectly, to keep opening these difficult conversations.

We came back asking ourselves if we are doing enough and that's probably what will make us do more.

T/W- mention of Suicide

Transliterated from voice notes retaining the speaker’s words and tone:

"I was raised by a single mother who is mute. Even though I have a huge family and many relatives, at the end of the day, it was just my mom and me who had to connect, and that was the major hindrance. The family communication gap kept widening, and the struggle was huge. Mostly, people did not understand, or even try to understand, and that is how it started for me.

Added to that, academic difficulties were another undeniable struggle. I think this is something all children struggle with in some way. Since we were small, relatives had this habit of talking a lot about the ill-fate that we had suffered since birth. And since I was little, I have carried this rage inside me, trying to understand why “relatives and families”, who should actually be on your side, talk like that. A lot of it felt like mockery.

Looking back, I think ignoring them and being indifferent to society at large actually helped me survive. I have spent a lot of my life trying to “know myself”, and I think this protected me a lot.

Five years down from that time when I made a fatal move, I am better now, but I won’t say I am okay. I feel lonely. I feel regret. I had experienced relationship loss, and the time, vision of a future and emotions I had invested were the biggest loss. I am on my journey to transform regret into lessons and experience, even though I find it difficult to trust anyone anymore.

I suffered from physical manifestations of symptoms, and I know it had a lot to do with stress. That also made me lose my purpose and willingness to live. I thought ending my life was the best decision, the silent exit that would be the easiest for everyone. Even now, looking back, I never saw even a single person I could talk to about it who would understand me.

My job and my busy schedule are the best things happening for me now. I can also find time to actually enjoy my life. A little bit of confidence has come back too. I can even manage my health more positively now."

Another narrative of loss from team Matai Society and how this narrows down to the need for effective Postvention in the aftermath of Suicide loss.
Postvention is not only what happens after a death. It is how we reach towards those who are left behind, especially when grief is entangled with displacement, financial insecurity, uncertainty and the everyday struggle to survive. This outreach to the family at Kwakta reminded us that psychosocial support after suicide must be timely, compassionate and grounded in the realities of people’s lives. Sometimes postvention begins with simply sitting beside a family, listening, identifying urgent needs and helping create a bridge to care and continued support.

**We invite more such sharings on what meaningful postvention can look like in our communities.**

***If you are a mental health practitioner, a community frontliner or anyone who carries a story like this, we invite you to reach out. Let us co-create a space to listen, reflect, grieve, learn and continue the work, together.**

And in between work, to receive such a heartfelt message is all it takes to reinforce us, strengthen our resolve and motivate us ...more.

There is something incredibly moving about choosing to remember those we have lost not only through rituals, but through the way we choose to live, the work we do within ourselves, and the good we try to put back into the world.

And to remember us alongwith the weight and tenderness of that offering is such a privilege.
To know that you chose to place a part of your savings into the work we are doing, with such intention and with your loved ones in your heart, is something The Collective Trust will hold with great care.

It reminds us that sometimes the work we do reaches places and people we may never even know about.

Thank you for trusting us with something so personal. And thank you for reminding why this work matters.

Your offering has reached us. And we hope that, in some small way, it reaches our loved ones too. ❤️

Suicide prevention begins with creating spaces where people feel safe enough to walk in, speak honestly, and be met with empathy rather than apprehension.
Sharing lived experiences like this helps us move beyond awareness into a deeper understanding of what makes connection possible when someone is struggling.

We invite more reflections, experiences, words, images, or moments that have helped you or someone you know hold on, reach out, or feel less alone.
Your sharing could become part of a living archive of hope and care. ❤️

This World Suicide Prevention Day 2026, we want to hear from you.

We often talk about suicide prevention through numbers, awareness campaigns, warning signs and services.
But there is another part of the conversation we want to make space for.
We are asking some questions here and maybe an attempt to answer them, even one question from the many might help someone to stay.

We invite you to share these fragments with us, not just as essays but maybe even photographs, screenshots, messages, testimonies, poems, memories or anything else that carries meaning.

You can DM us or write to us at reachcollectivetrust@gmail.com

With your consent, we will collect and document these fragments with the hope that, over time, they can become a resource for people, practitioners and communities.
We hope to build a Living Archive of Care, Connection and Hope; a collective record of the many different ways people find support and keep going.

Your contribution can be anonymous too.

Please go ahead, engage, share and make it reach to people who might need it the most.
And thank you so much for doing so.

**We also have physical posters with the same message and intent. Please DM us if you are interested and convinced to share it at your physical space. We would love to know this matters to people.**

#BeyondAwareness #WorldSuicidePreventionDay #WSPD2026 #LivingArchive #TheCollectiveTrust

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