2younglives.org

What It Is

2YoungLives is a nonprofit maternal health initiative supporting pregnant teenage girls in Sierra Leone. It was launched in 2017 by Mangenda Kamara and Lucy November in the Kuntorloh community of Freetown. Rather than offering generic charity aid, it focuses on highly specific issues such as adolescent maternal mortality, family rejection, malnutrition, lack of antenatal care, and social stigma. According to the website, the project has collaborated with King’s College London, the University of Sierra Leone, health authorities, and local organizations, and was previously one of the workstreams of CRIBS, an NIHR-funded global health research project.

Core Features

The core of the project is a “local female mentor” model: respected mature women in the community are trained to accompany pregnant teenagers as they prepare for motherhood, deal with everyday difficulties, access antenatal care, give birth in hospital, find safe accommodation, and, where possible, rebuild family relationships, return to school, or develop a small business. Its strength lies in integrating medical referral, emotional support, family mediation, and social support into trusted human relationships, rather than simply providing one-off material assistance.

Pricing and Funding

There is no visible information suggesting that the girls receiving support are charged fees; overall, it appears to be a donation- and grant-funded nonprofit model. The website mentions funding from individual donations, sponsored events, multiple charitable trusts, Guernsey Overseas Aid, NIHR research funding, and Upside Trust support for the 2026 cohort. However, the site does not clearly present an online donation portal, annual financial reports, or a budget breakdown, so transparency could still be improved.

Pros and Cons

Its strengths are a clearly defined intervention setting, a simple but effective method, and support from a pilot cluster randomized controlled trial: in project communities, deaths among teenage girls and their babies within 28 days of birth fell by 48%, and the fact that no teenage girls died among the first 343 beneficiaries is also compelling. The drawbacks are that the website is more of a project introduction than an interactive service platform; the scope of service remains limited by funding and mentor capacity; and public information on governance, finances, beneficiary applications, and volunteer participation is not yet complete.

Who It’s For

2YoungLives is suitable for donors, foundations, research institutions, university teams, and nonprofit partners focused on maternal and infant health in Africa, teenage pregnancy, community public health, and women’s empowerment. For those looking for a research-validated maternal health intervention model that can be replicated in low-resource communities, 2YoungLives is worth studying.

Access from China

Judging by the site format, this is a standard English-language nonprofit website with no sensitive technical services or heavy login requirements, so it should generally be directly accessible from mainland China. However, videos and external social media or media links such as Facebook and BBC may be restricted. Accessing the core website information should not be a major issue.