Design a Grief Support Programme for Young Adults Who Lost Parents to COVID-19 in West Africa

Between 2020 and 2022, COVID-19 killed hundreds of thousands of people across West Africa. In many households, the person who died was the primary breadwinner. Young adults in that family suddenly became caregivers for younger siblings, dropped out of university, or took on debt. The psychological fallout of that period has had very little organised response. Grief support in Nigeria and Ghana is largely informal, family-based, and time-limited. Religious communities provide some structure, but they rarely address the psychological dimensions of loss directly. Professional counselling is out of reach for most young people in this cohort, either because of cost, stigma, or a shortage of providers. Peer support is the realistic middle ground, but most peer support initiatives in the region lack a curriculum, training structure, or clear theory of change. Your deliverable is a 6-session peer support programme for young adult COVID-19 bereaved individuals. Produce a programme guide that includes: a facilitator profile and minimum training requirements, session outlines with goals, activities, and discussion prompts, ground rules for group safety, and a simple outcome tracking method that does not require psychological expertise to administer. The programme should be designed to run in a church hall, a youth centre, or a university common room with no specialist equipment. Strong submissions will demonstrate cultural sensitivity without being condescending. That means acknowledging the role of faith, the pressure to appear strong, and the financial stress that grief compounds in this context. Cite at least two sources on bereavement in sub-Saharan Africa. Explain who would run this programme and how it would sustain itself beyond the first cohort.