Aditya Birla World Academy hosts student-led mental health festival

October 9, 2026 /Posted byPrajwal EW / 0

Aditya Birla World Academy (ABWA), Mumbai, hosted the eighth edition of The Happy Place, a student-led mental health festival supported by Mpower, bringing together students from more than 19 schools to discuss emotional well-being through creative expression.

Held under the theme ‘The Messy Middle’, the festival engaged more than 290 students from Grades 7 to 12 and reached over 800 students through its wider outreach. Activities included slam poetry, advertisement filmmaking, stand-up comedy, drama and dance, allowing participants to explore uncertainty, setbacks and self-doubt.

Mansi Zaveri, founder of Kidsstoppress, attended as chief guest and spoke about resilience, perseverance and the importance of having alternative plans when facing setbacks. She also highlighted the role of well-being and self-awareness in navigating life’s challenges.

Shalini John, principal of ABWA, said mental health education should begin during the school years, helping students understand their emotions, build healthy relationships and seek support when needed.

The festival is part of ABWA’s broader approach to student well-being through Minds Matter, a mental health curriculum for students from Grades 1 to 12. The programme aims to develop the emotional and social skills needed to manage challenges.

According to the school, The Happy Place has been held over the past eight years to encourage open conversations about mental health and provide students with creative platforms to express their experiences.

Also Read: Ashoka University wins two FICCI Higher Education Excellence Awards

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“Most schools never consciously chose their basic unit. They inherited one from the past: the class. With the class as the focus, the things that happen between people get squeezed out: the apprentice learning alongside someone skilled, the child taught where they are rather than where the class is, and the daily practice of getting along with people they did not choose. The most promising new schools are organising themselves around the individual child rather than the class. A better approach is to group children by readiness in each subject and change those groups as they progress. Communication, collaboration and handling disagreement need daily practice. In a school built around individual progress, teachers get time back to observe, diagnose, mentor and step in where they are most needed. Most teachers entered the profession to make a difference to children. Many spend their careers managing classes instead. The best new schools offer them a system that finally lets them do the work they signed up for.”

- Rahul Raghavan, Economic Times, (27/10)

“Government medical college seats are 100% filled, vacancies are confined entirely to the private sector. Colleges and state fee-fixation committees must re-examine these fee structures, because lowering NEET qualifying cut-offs will not resolve an affordability crisis when millions of candidates already qualify. The vacancies are an indicator that qualifying for medical admission does not necessarily mean students could afford a seat. Institutions charge full fees to early applicants and offer discounts to late entrants to fill the vacant seats. It reflects a purely commercial approach that compromises merit while still failing to fill classrooms. High management-quota fees are putting seats beyond the reach of many candidates. Some 24 lakh students write the entrance test for 1.4 lakh seats. While the cream gets government seats, the rest of the students cannot afford a management-quota seat.”

- Divyansh Kumar, The Times of India, (2/11)

Aditya Birla World Academy hosts student-led mental health festival

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