Our Story
What started as a personal act of self-belief has grown into a movement using inspiration, aspiration and action to support better conversations around mental health and help people see what may be possible in their own lives.
Founded by international basketball player and mental health advocate Kofi Josephs.
Before Why Not I
Kofi Josephs grew up in Birmingham with an ambition to become a professional basketball player. As a teenager, he travelled alone to the United States to pursue that dream while carrying an experience he had barely begun to process. Only hours before his flight, he learned that his father had been murdered.
There was little space to stop, grieve or understand what had happened. A new country, education, basketball and the pressure to succeed demanded his attention. Like many people who are determined to keep moving, Kofi learned how to perform while carrying experiences beneath the surface.
The pursuit of his career brought extraordinary opportunities, but it also brought injuries, uncertainty and intense personal pressure. Two serious hip injuries within 18 months placed the future he had worked towards at risk. While studying for a psychology degree and trying not to disappoint the people who believed in him, Kofi reached a point where he no longer wanted to be here.
Later, after winning his first professional championship, he experienced a panic attack during a game and stepped away from basketball. It was a reminder that visible achievement and internal wellbeing do not always tell the same story. A person can appear successful and still be struggling profoundly.
The question that changed the direction
For Kofi, “Why not I?” became a way of leaving the door open to possibility. It was not a promise that success would be easy, automatic or available without support. It was a refusal to decide in advance that a different future was impossible.
The phrase challenged the way he spoke to himself. If negative self-talk could shape what someone believed they were capable of, then a better question could create enough belief to begin doing the work.
“Why not I?” means giving yourself a chance before the world has decided the outcome for you.
That belief helped Kofi return to the game, continue building his career and begin speaking honestly about the experiences that existed behind the achievements. He wanted to be more than someone who told people to believe in themselves. He wanted to become a visible example of inspiration and aspiration—showing through action that setbacks, difficult circumstances and mental health struggles do not have to remove every possibility from a person’s future.
From a question to a movement
As Kofi began sharing his story, the response showed that its themes reached far beyond professional sport. Young people, athletes, teachers, community members, workplace leaders and people experiencing their own difficult periods recognised parts of themselves in the conversation.
Why Not I grew through talks, workshops, sporting experiences, community engagements and practical acts of support. The settings changed—from schools and youth spaces to professional sport, workplaces and national institutions—but the underlying intention remained consistent: to make mental health conversations more human, connect inspiration with aspiration and help people identify a meaningful next step.
The movement has since taken shape through three connected areas of work.
Engagements
Honest, lived-experience-led conversations delivered across education, sport, workplaces and community settings—designed to create connection, reflection and movement towards action.
Explore Engagements
Why Not I Workouts
Sport-based experiences bringing together physical development, mental health learning, lived experience and practical tools that can support young athletes as people as well as performers. Although the first experiences have taken place through basketball, the concept is designed to grow across different sports and should never be presented as basketball-only or dependent on one person delivering it.
Explore Why Not I Workouts
Wings of Hope
Community activations developed to give time, resources and meaningful support to people and organisations—bringing partners and communities together around a practical act of care.
Explore Wings of HopeHow Why Not I creates movement
Why Not I is built around the belief that meaningful change rarely happens in a single moment. A story can open a door, but people also need the confidence to imagine something different, an opportunity to take action and the right support to continue.
A relatable example can open up a possibility that did not feel visible before.
That possibility can become a direction—something personal and worth moving towards.
Support, opportunity and connection can help turn intention into a practical step.
A step taken can change what someone believes is possible—and inspire the next person to begin.
The journey is not always linear. People may move forwards, step back, need support and begin again. The purpose is not to promise instant transformation, but to create better conditions for progress.
A visual history of the movement
Its history is best understood through stages of development rather than a list of dates: an idea becoming a conversation, then practical work that more people can help shape.
“Why not I?” begins as a mindset Kofi uses to challenge limiting self-talk and continue pursuing his own possibilities.
Kofi begins speaking more openly about pressure, grief, injury, ambition and mental health, using his experiences to help others feel seen and start honest conversations.
The message reaches schools, sporting organisations, workplaces, youth settings, community organisations and national institutions.
Why Not I expands beyond speaking through sport-based development, community engagement and activations that turn the values of the movement into visible action.
The movement begins creating clearer ways for communities, organisations and individuals to collaborate, contribute ideas and develop future work together.
What Why Not I is today
Inspiration. Aspiration. Implementation. Transformation.
Today, Why Not I Wellbeing is a community movement using lived experience, sport, storytelling and practical action to support mental health, inspiration and aspiration.
It works across different environments because mental health does not belong to one type of person or one part of society. The young person trying to imagine a different future, the athlete carrying pressure in silence, the employee struggling behind professional success and the community facing limited opportunities may need different forms of support—but each deserves to feel seen, heard and able to take a next step.
Why Not I does not provide therapy, diagnosis or clinical treatment. Its role is to create connection, open honest conversations, encourage possibility and work alongside people and organisations that want to turn positive intentions into meaningful activity.
The founder’s role
Kofi remains an active international basketball player, keynote speaker and mental health advocate. His experiences gave Why Not I its starting point and continue to shape the honesty behind its work.
But the ambition is not for every Why Not I experience to depend on Kofi or to remain centred on basketball. The movement is intended to create space for different sports, communities, voices, facilitators and collaborators who share its values and can help the work reach people in relevant and authentic ways.
Kofi’s personal speaking work and the wider Why Not I movement are closely connected but serve different purposes. His personal website presents his work as an individual speaker and person of influence. This website documents and develops the wider community movement, its activities and the people it seeks to support.
Where Why Not I is going
The next chapter is about developing Why Not I into a movement that can create more consistent, measurable and collaborative impact across communities.
That means growing the number and diversity of engagements, taking Why Not I Workouts into additional sports, developing further Wings of Hope activations and working with organisations that want to respond to real needs rather than create one-off moments.
It also means improving how the work is documented. Future activity should capture who was reached, what was delivered, what participants experienced and what happened afterwards—without reducing human impact to numbers alone.
The long-term ambition is for Why Not I to become a recognised platform for mental health empowerment through inspiration, aspiration, action and support: rooted in lived experience, strengthened by collaboration and capable of reaching people in ways that feel relevant to their lives.
Become part of the story
Why Not I is interested in hearing from communities, schools, sporting organisations, workplaces and individuals who see an opportunity to create something meaningful.
You may have a group that would benefit from an engagement, an idea for a community activation, a sport that could host a future Why Not I Workout or experience and resources that could help good work happen. Start the conversation and tell us what you are seeing.
