Building a society where inclusion and empathy comes first

My name is Shingi West, and I’m the founder and director of Timely Interactions.

A calling

I’ve always been drawn to people and their stories. Over the last decade, I’ve found myself immersed in programme management, design, facilitation, and community engagement. Through all of this, I’ve been searching for practical ways of working with women and young people in spaces of trauma, mental well-being, personal development, and cultural stigmas. For me, it’s not just about delivering a programme; it’s about building trust.

I’m a trained and qualified coach, a specialist wellness counselor, and I hold an honours in psychology. All of these things came together to inspire me to provide an integrated mental well-being space – support for communities and organisations that centres healing.

Moving to South Africa

Coming to South Africa from Zimbabwe was both a challenge and an opportunity. At first, I felt like an observer, I had to adapt to a new environment and understand the cultural context. But over time, I found ways to participate and to add value to the spaces I worked in. 

I always wanted to be a psychologist. Growing up, it was either that or a lawyer, but both felt out of reach. Careers like that were expensive, and in my world, they seemed to belong to other people. When I was older, married, and able to find the finances, I finally studied psychology. 

I first worked in a medical private practice before qualifying in psychology. Once I completed my psychology studies, I wanted to put into practice what I had learned. That’s when I began volunteering in the Cape Flats. I spent a year full-time at Arise, a family centre, and also volunteered regularly with Rape Crisis for three years. During this time, I worked closely with young people, families and women, developing and facilitating programmes while also learning deeply about people’s emotions and mental well-being. Volunteering required many sacrifices, but the experience was truly worth it.

That experience grounded me. It gave me a better understanding of both sides of the South African context – the inequalities, the struggles, and how deeply societal issues affect mental well-being. It propelled me to shift my career and focus on mental health in the NGO space.

Founding Timely Interactions

To work in those environments, I had to confront my own intergenerational traumas and stories. That was part of the journey too. By the time I started at Scalabrini Centre as a programme manager for the Women’s Platform, I felt equipped and able to listen to the stories of the women, and able to walk with them in their struggles.

That’s what eventually led me to start Timely Interactions.

Timely Interactions is a mental well-being organisation that designs and delivers programmes, workshops, and resources for underserved communities. Our focus is women, youth, and people on the move. We create spaces for dialogue and connection – spaces that can pull people out of isolation and remind them they are not alone.

Mental health, an often silent struggle

Many people struggle silently. For someone in an underserved community, it can take months or years to see a psychologist. It’s too expensive, or they don’t know where to go. Sometimes they’re dismissed altogether, and the stigmas around mental health are still strong.

We live in a world where people feel they have to split themselves into three different versions for example, the mother, the professional, and the individual self. It’s exhausting. What we try to do is show people that as you are, you are enough. Your roles are part of you, but you don’t need to fragment yourself.

Some people come to us having gone years without knowing they needed mental well-being support. Within weeks of engaging – even just through conversations – they find tools to help themselves. We keep communication open with anyone who joins our sessions, so should they need more support, they know where to turn.

Our work is with South Africans, people from other African countries, the UK, the USA, and people who are refugees, and asylum seekers. Each community carries different traumas, but when stories are shared, people realise they are not isolated. Hearing someone else’s testimony can give you the courage to keep going. That kind of experiential learning is powerful.

Doing the work for the next generation

This work is not easy. We face limited resources and sometimes cultural barriers. As a new organisation, we are still building foundations and partnerships. Sometimes it’s a struggle, but the community work must go on, regardless. 

Raising a family is a daily reminder of why I do this work. A big part of what pushes me is my daughter. I think about the kind of society I want to build for her. She is watching how I navigate and what I stand up for. So a lot of what I do is for her, and for the next generation of daughters and sons.

The youngest of five

In my family, I was the youngest of five children – the youngest by ten years. That means that there was very little time to be listened to, but I did a lot of listening and observing and I could discern difficult situations. Both of my parents were teachers, so education has always been important, but we were a reserved family and we did not speak about mental health. My father, especially, was very old school – strict, loving, but closed. And yet, as he grew older, he changed. In his eighties, he could apologise, he could say “I love you,” things that were unimaginable before. That showed me that change is always possible.

I also witnessed gender-based violence and saw family members struggle with their mental health. All of this made me want to find solutions – to break the silence, to give people a space to speak, to make sure the next generation doesn’t inherit the same silences.

Co-creating solutions

Timely Interactions fills a gap for people who don’t know where to turn. We work with communities, we collaborate with organisations and we co-create solutions. We listen as much as we teach. The resilience people show inspires me. Resilience is about taking back your power, growing, trying again. But it’s not about overstraining yourself, staying stuck in a cycle of pain. Positive resilience helps you grow to the next level without breaking yourself in the process.

Our collaborations, with communities, with youth, with organisations, are about building inclusive spaces where South Africans and people from other countries can learn from each other. Integration doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when we sit together, when we can ask questions, even awkward ones, and still respect each other. Sometimes that’s as simple as talking about food or culture. Sometimes it’s about addressing deep-rooted beliefs. But when people feel safe to ask and answer, understanding grows.

I believe in peer-led education. I can’t go across the whole of South Africa by myself, but when I leave a community and I know a group of women there feel empowered to continue the conversation, I know the work will carry on. Change only happens when we do it together.

Looking towards the future

The UNHCR capacitation project has been important for me. It gave me practical tools on compliance and strategic growth, and the confidence to think bigger about impact and sustainability. It has helped me see that Timely Interactions can grow, can scale up, can strengthen partnerships, and can be sustainable.

My hope for the future is simple but big: that mental well-being is seen as essential, not optional. That we build a society where inclusion and empathy come first – where we see each other as human beings before anything else. Because behind the good hair or bad hair, the nice clothes or torn clothes, there is always a person with a story, a person carrying something heavy. If we can be a little kinder, maybe they’ll share, and maybe that conversation will make all the difference.

Shingi’s story is one of four portraits celebrating the opportunities created by women’s resilience.