Today, Mind4Youth is a global organization with 170 chapters and more than 25,000 volunteers across 71 countries; its mission is to provide culturally competent mental-health resources to young people of color and empower them through programs, educational campaigns, and strategic partnerships, including with UNICEF, the United Nations, Google, Scholastic, and others. Since its launch, the organization has raised over $517,000 in donations. 

Mind4Youth provides resources through four distinct programs: ArtCare, which engages volunteers in creating digital cards with positive messages for underserved youth; PageCare, which collects and distributes books to communities in need; S.E.L.F. Care, which provides self-care resources and wellness support for young people; and HeartCare, which has distributed 4,850 mental health kits to young people in under-resourced communities. Each includes self-care items and vouchers from the online therapy platform BetterHelp for three months of free sessions with a licensed, board-accredited professional. To date, Mind4Youth has funded 1,800 therapy sessions—a priority for Shelke, who says she has observed firsthand, including in her own family, the way cultural stigma around therapy can prevent people from seeking help.

At the heart of Mind4Youth's model is a peer-led approach that Shelke believes is uniquely effective. "When you're talking with someone who's twice your age or older, there's immediately a gap between how much comfort someone feels and sharing something so vulnerable," she says. Over 90% of Mind4Youth's volunteers are young people of color or come from low-income backgrounds, a reflection of the communities the organization is most focused on serving.

Given Mind4Youth’s global reach, Shelke and her team also prioritize support for young people affected by humanitarian crises elsewhere in the world. “With wars especially, what we've noticed is mental health has become a third priority,” she says. “Yet it affects youth so much.”

This fall, Shelke will attend the University of California, Berkeley, and intends to double major in economics and neuroscience while continuing to lead Mind4Youth—work she views as personal and far from finished. "A lot of the issues Mind4Youth tries to address could be fixed on a larger scale with policy," she says, adding that advocating for states to mandate mental-health education, particularly in schools, would be the next step. 

“[Mental health advocacy] has become a part of me,” Shelke says, “and Mind4Youth is a part of that."