Early on at Find the Light, we discovered an important issue. There isn’t a lack of services available to help people. However, many people voiced that they were not able to find the right resource for them when they needed it. The economics of resource availability are complex, but we decided to try to tackle the issue. Several years later, it has become our flagship program and has helped countless people get access to the help they need.
When Find the Light Foundation got its first website in 2020, we compiled a list of resources we wanted to share with our visitors; it was a simple table with names in the left column and phone numbers and web addresses in the right column. It was simple and effective, but while we were searching for the resources we wanted to put on our website, we discovered that it was actually quite difficult to find high-quality services since there were so many available. There didn’t seem to be any centralized way to sift through all of them. Furthermore, we found that many other resource libraries had outdated resources that no longer existed.
From this, we decided to create the Resource Portal, a centralized library of mental health resources. The Portal contains hundreds of resources over 30 different categories, with more being added every day. While the Resource Portal focuses on online resources, we also have tools for in-person resources as well as resources that are fast to access. In addition to the services we offer for end-users, we also have tools for organizations as well. The Resources Department has its own website with more information about the services that we offer, which can be found here.