Luxembourg-based advocate Georg Poensgen and co-founder Veronika Novotná brought global youth mental health demands to World Health Organization (WHO) chief Dr. Tedros.
In late June, Georg Poensgen — a 21-year-old Luxembourgish-German-Swedish mental health activist and Luxembourg’s UN Youth Delegate — joined Czech advocate Veronika Novotná at WHO headquarters in Geneva to hand the Global Youth Call to Action on Mental Health (GYCAM) to Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“This is a milestone for the world’s youth mental health movement — and it is only the beginning.”
Georg Poensgen, Co-Founder of GYCAM
Tedros welcomed the initiative and pledged to review its recommendations with his team. Launched in 2025, GYCAM has since been signed by UN Youth Delegates from over 30 countries and has helped inspire a new joint WHO-UNICEF-UNESCO mental health strategy, marking the initiative’s most significant institutional recognition to date.
We asked the two co-founders to reflect on the initiative’s journey and their meeting with Dr. Tedros.”
What motivated you to co-lead the initiative?
Veronika: I’m the type of person who always asks: What more can I do to make a change? Serving as a Czech Youth Delegate to the UN, and later representing youth from across the entire EU at the UN, gave me access to decision-making spaces that unfortunately few of us ever reach. Once you have that kind of opportunity, you have to make the most of it — not for yourself, but for those you represent. When Georg and I were deciding which issue to prioritize and advocate for, mental health was the clear choice. Frankly, I don’t think I have to explain why.
Georg: For me, this started long before Geneva or the WHO. Mental health has shaped my life in profound ways. During the pandemic, I watched many of my closest friends struggle while support often lacked. Around the same time, through organising Well-Being Week at my school and later serving as Luxembourg’s UN Youth Delegate, I kept hearing the same message from young people across very different contexts: mental health was one of their biggest concerns, yet they rarely felt they had a meaningful role in shaping the solutions and felt like they were not really heard.
That always stayed with me. When Veronika and I met while both being UN Youth Delegates of our respective countries, we realised we were asking ourselves the same question: If mental health is one of the biggest issues young people raise everywhere, why weren’t young voices reaching tables where decisions about mental health are made? So instead of waiting for global decision makers to come ask us, we decided to “make noise” ourselves and urge global leaders to act on mental health with concrete demands from youth around the world.
What was the biggest challenge in engaging with the WHO process?
Georg: I think the biggest challenge was proving that young people have something valuable to contribute beyond sharing personal stories. Too often, youth participation ends with being invited to speak on a panel or share our experiences, but not being trusted to help shape the solutions.
From the beginning, Veronika and I wanted our “Global Youth Call to Action on Mental Health” to be different. We didn’t want to create another campaign that simply raised awareness. We wanted to bring together young people from different countries, listen to what they were asking for, and turn those ideas into concrete recommendations that global leaders could actually act on.
What stood out to you most from presenting it to Dr. Tedros in Geneva?
Veronika: I was frankly positively surprised by his promise to review the Call and tackle mental health. When it comes to youth participation, we can’t be naive: what we say isn’t automatically taken seriously. It takes immense effort to persuade leaders to move from talking about young people to actually acting with us. But every time I speak with someone like Dr. Tedros — whose genuine commitment is incredibly inspiring — that sense of mutual, intergenerational trust gives me hope that we can actually make this world a better place.
