The H. E. Butt Foundation is the largest private employer in Leakey, Texas—a small town in Real County—just down Highway 83 from our property in the Frio River Canyon. The town and its outlying areas have their own way of life, with a unique pace, identity, and set of assets. Rural living can be complex in ways that are overlooked and underappreciated, and there are too few services to meet the needs of the community, including physical and mental health resources.
In 2018, the Real County Community Initiative launched to cultivate wholeness by investing in local leadership and catalyzing partnerships that promote health and well-being for children and families. Our office and convening space in Leakey is available for nonprofits to use free of charge to collaborate, promote, and disseminate resources to families in the area.
For more information, contact RCCI’s Dana Williams.
Our Mental Health Initiative connects institutions such as churches, schools, and out-of-school-time programs to the training and resources they need to serve their communities’ needs with empathy and urgency. In addition to a pilot project at a San Antonio high school, we’ve launched two unique studies, including an inventory of mental health initiatives and projects in San Antonio, conducted in partnership with the Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, and a close study of pastors and congregations in select Protestant and Catholic churches, conducted in partnership with the University of Texas-San Antonio.
Our goals include ensuring that youth get the help they need when mental health challenges arise and that people concerned about their mental health find strong support in local communities.
For more information, contact Perri Rosheger.
Each year, our Capacity-Building program forms a Peer Learning Cohort consisting of select nonprofits that agree to work together for 36 months at becoming more efficient and effective. They dig deep on leadership development, continual learning processes, managing, planning, overseeing people, and generating resources. The goal: to help vital nonprofits operate at peak performance.
The organizations that have been involved represent a breadth of services being offered in San Antonio, from after-school activities to distressed housing restoration to mental healthcare and more. Each nonprofit is provided with an external assessment using the Impact Capacity Assessment Tool (iCAT), which helps orient them to the work ahead. In the first year, cohort members meet on five occasions, plugging into peer learning and creating the potential for lasting collaborations that can benefit communities for years to come.
For more information, contact Perri Rosheger.
While people in some parts of San Antonio have every opportunity to thrive, others in huge swaths of the city struggle against limited opportunities to do a lot of the basic things that make for a strong future: receive a quality education, enjoy access to good physical and mental health care, find a good-paying job, join a cohesive faith community, and more. Yet many of us rarely encounter those people or enter their neighborhoods, and we may harbor misguided perceptions or myths about the most vulnerable families and children in our region. To address these challenges, we need better stories, clearer conversations, and experiences that move our hearts and minds toward empathy and action.
The Foundation works to tell truer stories about vulnerable families and children in its magazine, Echoes, as well as in limited public events and special experiences designed to educate and inspire people toward personal and social change.
For more information, contact Patton Dodd.
