Rugged Compass · Power of Love Foundation, Zambia
For more than two decades, the Power of Love Foundation has worked alongside families in Matero, one of Lusaka's largest and most densely populated informal settlements. What began as a pediatric HIV program has grown into a "Circle of Care" model addressing maternal health, infectious disease, economic stability, and household resilience. Their latest expansion — into community-based mental health care — marks a significant new chapter in that work.
Over years of home visits and clinical accompaniment, the POLF team has encountered many individuals quietly living with untreated mental illness — women experiencing depression and anxiety linked to financial strain or gender-based violence, adolescents facing trauma and substance exposure, and individuals with severe mental illness whose families did not know where to turn.
Mental health in Zambia carries deep stigma. Conditions are often hidden, and families frequently delay seeking help until a crisis emerges. Having spent years working in HIV care, POLF's team understands intimately how powerfully stigma shapes who gets help — and who doesn't. Their long presence in Matero has built a foundation of trust that allows community health workers, who live within the neighborhoods they serve, to identify and support individuals who might otherwise remain unseen.
The breakthrough came when POLF's chief nurse, Christopher Mulela, forged a close partnership with Chainama Hospital — Zambia's primary mental health referral facility. Chainama's clinical leadership has trained POLF's community health workers to recognize common mental health conditions, identify crises, and support medication adherence and family engagement. When individuals need formal psychiatric evaluation or medication, POLF helps transport them to Chainama to begin treatment, then follows them closely in the community throughout recovery.
The approach follows the same principles that have guided POLF's HIV and maternal health work for over two decades. Each patient — and critically, their family — receives weekly home visits. Strengthening a family's capacity to support someone living with mental illness, the team believes, is essential to long-term stability. These visits allow staff to monitor symptoms, provide counseling, reinforce medication adherence, and catch early signs of relapse.
POLF is also working with churches and community organizations throughout Matero to reduce stigma and encourage families to come forward. Those conversations are already generating new referrals. The organization has begun structured care with approximately 60 patients — primarily women and adolescents — and has identified hundreds more through its community networks who could benefit from support.
Mental health intersects with every dimension of POLF's work. Depression affects HIV treatment adherence. Trauma shapes maternal and child health outcomes. Substance use and anxiety destabilize households and limit educational and economic opportunity. By integrating mental health into its existing Circle of Care framework, POLF aims to strengthen outcomes across the entire ecosystem it has spent two decades building.
For an organization that has worked alongside the same families and the same streets for over twenty years, this expansion feels less like a new program than a natural deepening of a commitment that was already there.
Power of Love Foundation is a member of Rugged Compass. Learn more and support their work here.
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