This training equips social change leaders to practice what we preach. Learn relational tools that support depth in community-building, and as well as how to democratize mental health support through a community or workplace.You’ll get introduced to a radical new format for peer-led meetings that model non-hierarchy alongside authentic leadership. You’ll also learn practices that measurably impact burnout, so that you can offer more effective care to clients and community members.e underrepresented in most clinical training.
If you've felt like something is missing from your own practice and crave greater satisfaction for yourself and your clients, this workshop is your answer.
Social Health Facilitation 101 fills a crucial gap in community organizing work. Although everything we do for mission-driven work in social change is built on the foundation of human connection, the actual nuts and bolts of connection are often just assumed to be happening alongside the rest of the work.
But in a world plagued by loneliness, disconnection, and burnout; the reality is that meaningful moments of relationship don’t happen without intention. Too often, opportunities for meaningful moments with the people we serve as well as our partners and team members get lost in the urgency of programs, fundraising, operations and organizing. And as human connection becomes more of a nice idea rather than the reality of our day-to-day work, not only is the impact of our mission less effective; we all become at higher risk for mental health symptoms and crisis.
This introductory workshop provides the foundational framework for the Relational Model for Social Health and Relational Cultural Theory as a basis for re-centering healthy social connection at the heart of social change: both for helping professionals and the communities themselves. Healthy networks of mutual aid and community support are only possible when the relationships at each node of the network are built on empathy and belonging; radical authenticity and radical compassion. Interpersonal facilitation of socially healthy experiences is critical to the formation and maintenance of those networks.
Jennifer Nicolaisen
Jennifer Nicolaisen is the co-founder and Executive Director of SeekHealing, an Asheville-based non-profit pioneering a novel “social health” protocol to address the loneliness epidemic and its widespread impact on burnout and mental health. SeekHealing’s non-profit programs deliver meaningful, facilitated experiences of human connection and healthy social interactions at a grassroots community level; working alongside mental health providers in order to reduce deaths of despair like overdoses and suicides.
Jennifer’s journey as a pioneer and thought leader in the emergent field of social health began with their own recovery from Substance Use Disorder and burnout working as a corporate consultant in the oil & gas industry. In the seven years since then, they have facilitated hundreds of “Connection Practice” meetings and dozens of “Listening Training” workshops in communities hard-hit by the mental health & opioid epidemics in Western North Carolina. Jennifer is a master facilitator and practitioner of social health techniques; teaching experiential & mindfulness-based techniques around interpersonal communication, social power dynamics, group facilitation, and how to democratize non-clinical trauma healing work through community relationships. Jennifer spearheaded the development of this unique curriculum in collaboration with Dr. Gabor Mate, Dr. Rachel Wurzman, Sara Ness of Authentic Revolution, and the Board of Directors at the Circling Institute.
Under their tenure as Executive Director of SeekHealing, the organization has grown to serve over 3,000 people annually in Western North Carolina, 92% of whom had a documented mental health history and 37% of whom were either unhoused or housing insecure. To make that work possible at the community level, they now support other organizations and non-profits in implementing social health programs like SeekHealing’s in order to reduce burnout and accelerate organizational impact; both internally at workplaces and within the communities those workplaces serve.
