01/20/2026
LAUNCHING: Trauma-Responsive Care Personnel (Peer Support) Program.
Community-Facing 🗣️:
We are launching something BIG — and it didn’t come from a boardroom.
It came from listening to community.
Over the past two years, across every TEAO program, circle, workshop, and somatic space, the same truths have surfaced again and again:
“Witnessing is medicine.”
This program bridges the gap so many people fall into —
between clinical mental health systems and real-life overwhelm, grief, burnout, and transition.
Our peer support model is:
• Trauma-responsive
• Community-rooted
• Non-clinical
• Short-term (4–6 weeks)
• Grounded in safety, consent, and embodiment
And today, we are proud to share that our first cohort are ready to go after 6 months of training and prep! Our first 6 Trauma-Responsive Care Personnel are ready to serve community.
Last week, during our somatic peer support spaces at TEAO Canada, these themes returned — not as concepts, but as lived experience in the room.
They reminded us that healing does not require fixing ourselves.
It requires being met with patience, presence, and care — at the pace our nervous systems allow.
This program is FREE — made possible through a year of collective investment, trust, and community advocacy from:
• Upstream Fund, Region of Waterloo
• Waterloo Region Community Foundation, Racial Equity Fund
• City of Kitchener through RISE
This structure ensures peer support at TEAO remains safe, ethical, and sustainable — for both community members andvolunteers — with clear boundaries, shared responsibility, and ongoing support.
This is not rushed care.
This is not crisis response.
This is relational care.
And we believe it may be the missing link between mental health services and the lived realities of community.
We are deeply grateful to everyone who has shown up with honesty, courage, and care as this work continues to grow.
Learn more or request support through our Peer-Led Services Directory: https://www.teaocanada.com/peer-led-services-directory OR