Jojo Quattrocchi has been inspired to create his own mental health charity after losing his friend to suicide and dealing with his own mental health.
His charity named Amarelo, which means yellow in Portuguese, aims to give people alternative tools to cope with their mental health.
He said: “It just became a passion of mine to try and create something around mental health.”
He hopes to create a space of trust and give people the tools he himself has learned to cope with his mental health.
Through the Amarelo charity, Jojo hopes to save lives and highlight alternative methods of coping such as yoga, meditation, spirituality and spending time in nature.
He said “I know how horrendous it is and how your mind is poorly and you can get better but it is very easy to give in, if I didn’t have the support around me I could quite easily not be here right now.”
“I want to transform my pain into something positive and help people who are at that stage that I was a few years ago.”
He also said how mental health is a very big spectrum and you can be doing everything right and still feel depressed or anxious, and people can get better but a lot has to do with not getting the right diagnosis or treatment.
He said: “Mental health is very difficult to treat and we need more groups and hopefully Amarelo will be my own way to help people.”
The charity is still at it’s early stages, but Mr Quattrocchi aims to get his charity registered and get funding from Sheffield City Council and the government in London.
Although it is taking much longer than he anticipated, his focus right now is to get the charity’s website online. Jojo has spent the last few months working on this project and he said the project is very valuable to him.
Through his website, he hopes to direct people to spaces that would help them to get better and share his personal story to encourage others.
He plans to launch the Amarelo website in May during National Mental Health week.