“Centering Community” Starts with the Mission and Ends with the Work

Amidst a backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion work, it is critical to recall the intention behind the work in the first place—which is to advance progress for communities being left behind.

The long-established practice of “centering” communities can help us ground again the intention behind equity work. When an organization’s core constituents are prioritized and centered in its programming, resources, and decision-making, concepts like equity and inclusion are expressed through action and impact. That is, they become part of routine choices instead of statements. Solutions and approaches can be asset-based rather than deficit-based. It reframes community members from being “beneficiaries” to stakeholders with their own values, culture, voice, and agency.

“Centering” is not new—James Charlton’s Nothing About Us Without Us: Disability Oppression and Empowerment made the case in 2000—but it can be hard to implement in practice. As Tulaine Montgomery wrote, proximity to community “may be the most powerful untapped force for change we have,” yet philanthropy has too often looked at communities through a paternalistic lens. More recently, Lori Bartczak and Sandra Moore observed that while many nonprofit organizations understand solutions work better when affected people shape them, “when it comes to including that voice…the work often stalls before it starts.”

For an organization looking to “center” the community, the starting point is often hiding in plain sight: the words the organization uses to describe itself. Do the organization’s core statements, such as its mission, vision, and values, reflect language and lenses of external professionals and/or funders – or the language of the community it serves? A mission statement is more than a communication device. It signals whose knowledge counts, whose aspirations are centered, and who the organization ultimately answers to. Can anyone in the community read it and say, “That’s us”?

Two Feathers Native American Family Services offers one example of what this shift can look like in practice. Public Equity Group was honored to collaborate with Two Feathers between January and December 2023 as part of its strategic evolution.

Two Feathers Native American Family Services

Two Feathers Native American Family Services was established in 1998 to respond to the acute mental health needs of Native Americans in low-income and geographically isolated coastal and mountain communities in rural Humboldt County, CA. Overall, Humboldt County is one of just two California counties with the highest proportion of residents reporting four or more Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). With respect to Humboldt County Native youth in particular, 50 percent of youth experience struggles with substance abuse and 60 percent report some degree of involvement with special or alternative education schools, foster care, mental health systems, and/or justice systems.

“It took 150 years to colonize our people, it’s going to take that much time to heal.”

With the appointment of Virgil Moorehead Jr. (Yurok/Tolowa and member of the Big Lagoon Rancheria), as Two Feathers’ director of behavioral health in 2017, and later, its executive director, Two Feathers began investing in increasingly robust clinical programming, growing the organization’s ranks of formally trained clinical staff, and contributing to the organization’s reputation as a highly effective, culturally affirming mental health and wellness program. Under Moorehead, who holds a doctorate in Psychology from the Wright Institute and completed his post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford University, the organization  expanded from a small clinical provider to a multi-site organization partnering with all local tribes and 14 school districts, providing clinical therapy to more than 800 unique youth over five years.

As a result of its successful investments in robust, culturally competent clinical services, “Two Feathers has become [regarded as] the premier Native youth mental health program in California,” noted a leading California mental health expert, a distinction recognized most recently by the 2026 James Irvine Leadership Award.

Per one Two Feathers’ community partner we spoke with during our consulting work, “The vision is that you break these intergenerational cycles of substance abuse, domestic violence, social determinants of health, foster care. You start with some kids, and [help] them have a different experience, opportunities, and environment. And perhaps their children won’t experience the same. It’s a long-term life process…It took 150 years to colonize our people, it’s going to take that much time to heal.” 

Alongside its clinical programs, around the year 2018, Two Feathers also began offering increasingly intensive cultural programs, especially during summer months, to reinforce connection, identity, and belonging as core components of Native youth mental health. Two Feathers, for example, played a leading role in expanding youth participation in the Stick Game, “an inter-Tribal competition played regionally on Tribal Lands,” and the Flower Dance, “a young woman’s coming-of-age ceremony,” according to the California Reducing Disparities Project.

During an interview with Two Feathers program staff, one program participant reflected: “Culture is important to me…it’s made me more mature, and it’s helped me with a lot of things in life and will help me in the future. It’s important for more youth to grow up with their culture; they can carry on that knowledge to future generations…. Culture can help people in our struggling communities.”

Although Two Feathers’ cultural programs were highly praised and deeply valued by participants and community members, they ebbed and flowed over the course of a given year, in part because of limited resources and staff capacity. In the beginning, the connections between Two Feathers’ clinical and cultural programs were unclear to many within the organization and in the community. While participants were referred from the clinical program to cultural programs and vice versa, the two programs felt siloed to participants, staff, and partners—related and very important, yet somewhat separate, efforts.

To address these challenges, in 2022 Two Feathers launched a new strategy that clarified the central role of community, culture, and lived experiences in its approach to mental health and wellbeing. The organization reframed its work beyond crisis response, articulating a holistic model that integrates clinical care, cultural programming, youth leadership, and pathways to economic stability as mutually reinforcing supports for long-term healing.

“We have gone from crisis intervention to approaching mental health more holistically.”

As part of this shift, Two Feathers updated its formerly “deficit-based” mission (“to reduce unnecessary suffering among Native American Children and Families living in Humboldt County”) to an asset-based one that more clearly reflects the communities’ strengths, values, and aspirations: “To empower Native American youth and their families to achieve their full potential by offering culturally affirming mental health and wellness programs in Humboldt County.” This view is paired with a long-term vision that reflects a holistic and intergenerational worldview: “Two Feathers envisions a world filled with love and in balance within ourselves and with all of creation for generations to come.”

Cultural practice, community knowledge and youth experience are no longer supplements to clinical practice. They are now part of the core model.

Two Feathers’ approach also celebrates “indigenous giftedness” and “the importance of understanding the good life, the human way—in Hupa Language K’winya’nya:n-ma’awhiniw—to live in balance and harmony with the world by having honor and respect for community members, the environment, self, ancestors, and creation” (per a 2025 report to the James Irvine Foundation).

Two Feathers also developed a theory of change that more clearly equalizes and integrates clinical care and cultural/human development programming. Within its human development programs, Two Feathers has expanded programs promoting mentorship and job training, as well as programs to address bullying and self-harm in schools (including programming with a strong LGBTQ+/2Spirit focus), increasing youth self-efficacy through cultural teachings that emphasize kindness.

Moorehead noted, “We have gone from crisis intervention to approaching mental health more holistically. We give students options. If a student [is struggling], we ask: Do you want a clinician or cultural program support? We get after the same issues in a more creative way.”

The Youth Ambassador (Leadership Development and Job Training) Program, for example, provides youth ages 15 to 21 the opportunity to develop leadership and advocacy abilities while deepening their connection to others, community, and culture. Activities include peer advising, employment preparation and support, certifications (first aid, food safety), conflict resolution, landscaping and gardening, event planning, youth activities, cultural education, team building, public speaking, and problem solving.

Evaluation data suggest that program participation across Two Feathers’ clinical and human development programs is growing—and that participants are achieving notable gains. In 2018, Two Feathers served 25 youth, but by 2024, Two Feathers had received 247 new referrals, served 289 youth in individual counseling, employed 88 youth through leadership and workforce programs, and engaged 476 community members in cultural activities. Youth participating in leadership development programs reported gains in goal setting, school and workplace engagement; gains in substance abuse prevention knowledge; and reductions in substance use. In communities where mental health crises are endemic, 57 percent of participants reported no mental health challenges in the prior 30 days; 43 percent of leadership and workforce program participants became employed, and 36 percent enrolled in college or trade school (in communities with high baseline rates of unemployment and college enrollment).

As California undertakes a multi-billion-dollar overhaul of its youth mental health system to better serve the 284,000 California children dealing with major depression, the need for effective, culturally grounded models has never been greater. In California, 1 in 5 adolescents has a diagnosed mental or behavioral health condition, and Indigenous youth are at greater risk, statistically. Two Feathers is poised to launch two best practice, holistic wellness centers for youth, and is well positioned to inform statewide conversations about culturally grounded, community-based mental health models.

As Moorehead noted, “Staff members have remarked that it’s powerful for a Native organization to say ‘Hey—we don’t have to follow. We can be national leaders in mental health; we can be creative, have better outcomes, better systems. We can be a model program not just for Native youth, but for all youth and their communities.’”

Putting Community at the Center

The journey that Two Feathers took shows how an organization can clarify its purpose by centering community in its mission and work. Revisiting an organization’s focus and strategies can be more than an exercise in language. It is a way to decide whose needs and experiences shape an institution’s direction and, ultimately, whether its work makes a difference. The organization’s experience shows how clarifying who is at the center can reshape programs, strengthen alignment with community needs, and shift outcomes over time.

The real test is straightforward: How well does the mission center the community it serves? Can a community member quote it with a smile? Do the programs address a deficit from the outside in, or does the organization work from within, helping the community fulfill its own aspirations?

Two Feathers’ experience suggests that centering community is not a communications exercise. It is a discipline that cuts across governance, strategy, management, and resource allocation. Centering community means community values and knowledge reshape programs, redirect resources, and ultimately drive decisions.