Sponsor a Social Health Catalyst
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This is a 1-year course and hands-on apprenticeship that empowers leaders with community organizing skills to sustain social health programs that directly address loneliness & support disaster readiness.
Full scholarships available for WNC Catalysts thanks to our partners at Dogwood Health Trust and Center for Disaster Philanthropy.
Loneliness had already been declared a public health epidemic in 2023 by the former US Surgeon General when Hurricane Helene hit Western North Carolina last year, and the need for resilient social infrastructure became truly urgent.
The Community Catalyst Program has been designed to activate a regional network of "social health catalysts” – local leaders, healers, artists and facilitators from eight historically marginalized demographics – to restore social capital and build long-term resilience in our region.
Selected catalysts will be empowered with stipends, technology systems, training and coaching to support their community organizing work.
The expectation is that catalysts will establish hyperlocal rhythms in their communities for trauma-informed support structures, mutual aid coordination, and non-clinical mental health organizing.
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The innovation at the heart of this initiative is a new kind of regional public health infrastructure: one that equips everyday residents to lead mental health first aid and resilience-building in their own neighborhoods.
Catalysts are people who already occupy either formal or informal leadership roles in their communities and social networks.
They are those among us who are willing to think outside the box and take the time to facilitate the real human relationships that people need in order to effectively access resources from larger systems & programs.
Through the course training ecosystem, selected Catalysts will meet with trainers who personalize their learning journey and provide them with the tools they uniquely & specifically need to activate social health and social capital in their impact area.
For Catalysts eligible for grant funding, the program uses a “Trust & Reciprocity” structure to formalize agreements with Catalysts to become fiscal agents of SeekHealing: an agreement that furnishes Catalysts with monthly organizing stipends in exchange for attendance data related to connection events they organize (Connection Practice Meetings, Listening Training courses, social events, and other connection-oriented activities or Connection Boosters) as well as mutual aid interactions they coordinate (Connection Missions and Seeker Pairs). Depending on eligibility, some catalysts may also be eligible for facilitation stipends on a case by case basis.
The Community Catalyst Course is a path forward for rebuilding social infrastructure in rural, low-income, and historically marginalized communities; with disaster readiness and accessible mental healthcare built into relationships, not bureaucracy.
The full value of this training is estimated at $8,500 per person, but thanks to generous support from our funding partners (the Center for Disaster Philanthropy, Vital Strategies, and Dogwood Health Trust), we are able to offer it at no cost to participants in the 2026 pilot cohort.
Mental health and/or substance use recovery, elders, youth, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, justice-involved, unhoused, rural, disaster-impacted
BIPOC, mental health and/or substance use recovery.
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