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Co-create youth mental health innovations

The Innovation Centre at Kids Help Phone, supported by Bell, is reimagining how young people access help in all sizes through AI and innovative technologies. Because no issue is too big, no feeling is too small, and help means everything.

acceleratorKHP is developing generative AI, building on our continued efforts of establishing the highest standard of support

Generative AI is already part of young people’s lives — and everywhere in their world. Many youth are turning to AI tools to seek help, information and guidance.

Our innovative solutions aims to:

  • Create pathways for human connection
  • Offer choice and flexibility for accessing help, co-created with youth, for youth
  • Connect young people with real, trustworthy humans when they need them most
  • Are guided by lived experience, clinical expertise and robust data
  • Are safer, more intuitive and more authentic

Our approach puts youth at the centre: Technology, AI and innovation for mental health support are an evolving extension of human connection, not a replacement.

KHP believes in the immense power of collaboration to solve complex challenges in support of young people’s right to express themselves. To make a meaningful and lasting impact, we: 

  • Start with real needs, guided by youth insights, frontline experience, data and service experience.  
  • Co-create across disciplines, bringing together young people, clinicians, researchers and partners — including Innovators for Feel Out Loud and tech leaders across Canada.  
  • Align and adapt, setting success criteria and then piloting, testing, refining and replicating.  
  • Design with care, prioritizing safety, transparency, impact and cultural relevance.  
  • Build, measure and learn by prototyping early and often — and making no assumptions.  
  • Scale with trust, growing only what aligns with KHP’s broader model of support. 

What young people from coast to coast are sharing in our GenAI research

From tech, AI and youth mental health innovations. Their input is clear and shapes every innovation at KHP.   

  • Be transparent: “I want to know who’s behind it, and what it’s doing with my data.”  
  • Be real: “Don’t pretend it’s human — just be honest with me.”  
  • Be useful: “It should help me get to a real person when I need that.”  
  • Be safe: “Emotional tone and escalation pathways must feel trauma-informed, not robotic.”  
  • Be credible: “If I don’t trust it, I won’t use it. And I can tell when it’s faking.”  

Are you 12 to 24 years old and interested in youth mental health innovations, tech and AI for support in Canada?  

acceleratorKHP has engaged over 250 youth and equity-deserving groups across Canada to co-create authentic resources for mental health support — and we’re seeking more young people to join the movement! 

As part of the Youth Co-Creation Community at acceleratorKHP, you can:  

  • share your ideas in short bilingual surveys 
  • participate in focus groups and workshops 
  • test early tools and help make them better
Sign up for the Youth Co-Creation Community!

Introducing Aselo, human-centred tech-for-good and open-source developments 

Every day and every night — even at 3 a.m. when a young person feels they have no one else to turn to — Kids Help Phone’s professional counsellors are there to answer the call. Yet despite being lifelines on the frontlines, virtual mental health professionals are often the last to benefit from new technology. 
Not at KHP. 

To ensure counsellors can respond as quickly, effectively and compassionately as possible, Kids Help Phone partnered with Tech Matters to develop Aselo — a purpose-built, industry-leading contact centre platform designed with and for counsellors. Now setting a new global standard for national helplines, Aselo streamlines counsellors’ work so more young people can get timely support for any issue or feeling. 

Aselo helps counsellors: 

  • streamline calls, chats and resources in one interface 
  • spend more time with youth (and less on admin)
  • use tech to amplify clinical expertise and reduce burnout 
  • work in English or French
  • focus on human connection so youth can Feel Out Loud

Help build the next generation of youth mental health innovations in Canada!  

Your help means everything. To co-create ethical youth mental health innovations with young people, for young people, contact acceleratorKHP today!

CONNECT ACCELERATORKHP TODAY