Live training lab · running now

Practice the conversations that change lives

SHIFT Global helps frontline workers, counselors, educators, and humanitarian teams practice complex conversations, receive competency-based feedback, and build real-world capability before they enter the field.

Grounded in 18 years of global mental health, crisis-response, and implementation research across 25 countries.

5
Evidence-informed core helping competencies
50+
Curated practice modules
10+
Languages — clients & feedback, culturally adapted
18 yrs
Research in crisis & global mental health settings
Language & culture

Practice in your language. Be understood in your culture.

Most training simulators speak English and grade everyone against a Western script. SHIFT doesn't.

  • Clients speak the trainee's language — switchable in one tap, mid-program, per cohort or per learner.
  • Every piece of feedback follows — live coaching, scoring notes, and the final debrief arrive in that same language.
  • Culturally responsive scoring — programs define the relevant cultural context, and skills are assessed accordingly. Indirect communication, deference, and other culturally appropriate styles are not treated as deficiencies.
EspañolFrançaisالعربية中文Kiswahiliहिन्दीবাংলাBahasa Indonesia+ other languages
🧑 Rosa · client
No quiero preocupar a mi familia… por eso no digo nada.
🎓 Trainee
Entiendo — llevas mucho tiempo cargando esto sola. ¿Qué ha sido lo más difícil?
● Empatía & conexión — nombraste la carga que Rosa describió, y tu pregunta abierta la invita a seguir.
A real practice exchange with live coaching — entirely in the trainee's language.
Behind SHIFT

Built on nearly two decades of intervention research and implementation

SHIFT draws on 18 years of research developing, evaluating, and implementing psychological and psychosocial interventions across humanitarian, global health, and high-stress workforce settings. Its simulations, competency frameworks, and feedback systems are informed by evidence-based practices and by our team's extensive experience translating evidence into real-world training and practice.

Why SHIFT

The lack of supervised practice is the barrier

Helping skills develop through repeated practice, timely feedback, and effective supervision. Yet live role-play is difficult to scale, feedback is often delayed, and the conversations that matter most — around safety, disclosure, resistance, and crisis — can be especially difficult to rehearse. SHIFT gives trainees structured, repeatable opportunities to practice these conversations and receive feedback while the learning is still fresh.

Why now

A new opportunity for responsible, scalable learning

AI can make realistic, repeatable practice available at a scale traditional training alone cannot achieve. But in high-stakes helping work, scale is not enough. Simulation must also be safe, supervised, culturally responsive, and grounded in observable competencies. SHIFT is being built to meet that need — combining the reach of AI with the structure, accountability, and human oversight that high-quality training requires.

What's inside

Turn practice into measurable skill

SHIFT combines responsive simulation, contextual competency assessment, and evidence-linked feedback to help trainees learn, practice, reflect, and improve. Every session shows what the learner demonstrated, where they struggled, and what to try next.

🗣️

Clients that respond to how you engage

Trust is earned. Simulated clients open up as rapport develops and may hesitate or pull back when a response misses the moment. Each new attempt introduces natural variation, so trainees learn to respond rather than memorize a script.

🌍

Adaptable across languages and cultural contexts

Trainees can practice and receive feedback in their preferred language. Cultural context informs both the client interaction and the assessment rubric, helping ensure that communication is interpreted within the relevant setting rather than against a single Western norm.

🎯

Contextual competency assessment

Responses are assessed for quality in context: whether the skill was well formed, well timed, and responsive to the client. Trainees are evaluated only on competencies that the scenario provides a meaningful opportunity to demonstrate — not on whether they force every skill into every conversation.

💬

Explainable feedback that teaches

SHIFT does more than identify an open question or empathic response. It quotes the trainee's words, explains why the response worked or missed the mark, and offers a stronger alternative — turning each interaction into a learning opportunity, not simply a score.

🔁

A deliberate-practice loop

Revisit difficult moments, try a different response, compare attempts, and build competence module by module. Progress becomes visible over time, allowing practice to accumulate rather than end with a single session.

🌱

A lower-pressure way to practice

Focus Mode hides live scoring so learners can stay present in the conversation without watching every indicator. A complete, supportive debrief is still provided at the end of the session.

📋

Supervisor-ready debriefs

Each session concludes with a structured summary of strengths, missed opportunities, transcript-based examples, and targeted priorities for continued practice.

📊

Supervisor review dashboard

Programs can monitor development over time, review individual sessions, identify common skill gaps, and focus supervision where it will have the greatest value.

🧭

Guided from day one

A built-in walkthrough, plain-language competency definitions, response starters, and worked examples help learners understand both the platform and the skills they are practicing — from initial orientation through to independent practice.

How it works

From cold open to confident close in four steps

1

Choose a module

Select a skill pathway or scenario matched to the learner's role and setting.

2

Meet the client

Respond turn by turn to a simulated client with a realistic presenting concern.

3

Practise with live feedback

Each response is scored turn by turn — tap any skill to see why it landed and a stronger line to try next.

4

Review and improve

End with a graded, supervisor-ready debrief — strengths, focus areas, and a model response for each skill.

Session Feedback · Stress Management · Taylor
4/5
AI-assisted assessment · 4 of 5 competencies demonstrated
Empathy & Rapport✓ Demonstrated
Named the feeling and validated before moving to problem-solving.
Open Questions✓ Demonstrated
Asked an open question that invited the client to elaborate.
Technique Use✓ Demonstrated
Introduced paced breathing with clear, concrete parameters.
Action Plan✓ Demonstrated
Agreed one small, doable step to practice before the next session.
Safety & Referral✗ Not shown
No explicit risk check — reasonable here, but ask directly when a client describes panic or hopelessness.
Summary: Strong empathy, a clear technique, and a concrete plan. Next time, add an explicit safety check when a client describes panic or hopelessness.

Step 4 in the app — every session ends with a structured, AI-assisted debrief: what the trainee demonstrated, what was missed, and what to practice next.

The rubric

A rubric for observable helping skills

SHIFT assesses five core competencies that can be practiced, observed, and strengthened over time: empathy and rapport, open questions, technique use, safety and referral, and action planning. Each competency is evaluated for quality, timing, responsiveness, and cultural and contextual fit — not simply for whether it appeared.

Empathy & Rapport

Using reflective listening, validation, and warmth to help the client feel heard and understood.

Open Questions

Asking questions that invite elaboration and help the client describe their experience in their own words.

Technique Use

Applying the module's core helping technique accurately, appropriately, and in response to the client's needs.

Safety & Referral

Recognizing relevant risk cues, responding calmly and directly, and identifying an appropriate next step when needed.

Action Planning

Working with the client to agree on one small, specific, and realistic next step.

The training library

A curated library grounded in evidence-based helping skills

From foundational communication skills to safety and risk management, SHIFT offers structured modules for practicing the conversations that helping professionals encounter in real-world settings. The library is designed to support progressive learning, with new modules and intervention-specific pathways added over time.

📖 Psychoeducation & Normalization
Explain symptoms simply, normalize reactions, set goals.
🗣️ Basic Helping Skills
Rapport, agenda-setting, active listening, summary.
📅 Behavioral Activation
Link activity to mood; schedule rewarding actions.
💬 Problem-Solving
Define, brainstorm, choose, plan, review.
😌 Stress Management
Paced breathing, grounding, arousal regulation.
👥 Social Support Activation
Identify safe supporters; plan realistic outreach.
🧠 Cognitive Coping
Spot thought–feeling links; coach helpful self-talk.
🤝 Interpersonal Skills
Assertive "I" statements; brief role-play.
🪜 Exposure (supervised)
Rationale, graded hierarchy, gradual approach. Use only in appropriate training and supervision contexts.
🎯 Values & Committed Action
Clarify values; commit to one tiny step.
🛡️ Safety & Risk Management
Ask directly, make a safety plan, refer well.
🍃 Substance-Use Brief Intervention
Explore pros/cons; set a small change goal.
🔁 Relapse Prevention
Spot warning signs; build a coping plan.
🛏️ Routine & Sleep
Sleep hygiene, daily structure, practical barriers.
+ many morenew modules added regularly
Who it is for

Who SHIFT is for

🎓

Training programs

That need scalable practice and feedback for large cohorts.

🧭

Supervisors

Who need visibility into trainee growth and where to focus support.

🌍

Global mental health & task-shifting programs

Training lay and non-specialist workforces to deliver evidence-based care with fidelity — across contexts, languages, and high-stakes settings.

🧑‍🏫

Educators & workforce programs

Teaching high-stakes interpersonal skills.

🔬

Researchers

Studying AI-supported capability development and skill transfer.

For supervisors & programs

Turn practice into supervision-ready data

Supervisors and program leads can see where trainees are building competence, whether they're practising with fidelity to the method, where they need support, and how performance changes over time.

  • Competency mastery heatmaps — see exactly where each trainee is strong and where to intervene.
  • Score trends over time — track growth across the cohort, filter by module and date.
  • A review queue — open any session, read the AI's per-competency notes, then approve or return with comments.
  • Independent-practice signals — hint usage is logged per session, so you can see who's building judgment on their own.
  • Export everything — CSV of runs and full session transcripts for records or grading.
24
Runs
7
Trainees
3.6
Avg score
1.4
Avg hints/run
Average score trend
Competency mastery
Amina
88%
72%
54%
31%
70%
Luis
75%
50%
80%
44%
66%
Maya
58%
90%
48%
28%
62%
Research & impact

Grounded in research, built for scale

SHIFT is being developed alongside a review of AI-enabled training in global mental health settings, with a focus on competency measurement, safety, cultural validity, supervision, and skill transfer. The research agenda is practical: can AI-supported simulation help people develop demonstrable, transferable helping skills — safely, equitably, and at scale?

🔬

How people build capability with AI

SHIFT studies how people develop capability with AI in high-stakes interpersonal work, and builds validated measures to assess whether AI-supported learning transfers into safer, more effective practice.

🌍

Closing the global mental health gap

SHIFT addresses the implementation gap in global mental health by making training, practice, supervision, and fidelity assessment more scalable and culturally adaptable.

Boundaries

What SHIFT is not

SHIFT is not a therapy chatbot, diagnostic system, crisis service, or replacement for clinical supervision. It is a practice-and-feedback environment designed to complement formal training, live supervision, face-to-face role-play, and case discussion under appropriate program oversight.

Ready to see it in action?

Try the interactive demo in your browser — no install, no account. Or reach out to bring SHIFT Global to your program.

Context

Built with, and for, the field

Designed for use in settings such as universities, humanitarian organizations, public health programs, and workforce training teams — informed by experience across global mental health, humanitarian response, refugee health, and workforce wellbeing.

Developed by Dr. Alvin K. Tay, Adjunct Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University; former United Nations global mental health technology and strategy advisor. LinkedIn ↗