Connecting Non-Profits Across the Mental Health Continuum
SD Youth Resilience Network
The South Dakota Youth Resilience Network is a proposed statewide coalition model aligning nonprofit partners across prevention, cultural connection, workforce identity, and recovery to strengthen youth mental health outcomes and behavioral health integration in South Dakota.
About the Project
The Challenge
The Proposed Solution
The Proposed Solution
South Dakota’s youth face rising rates of suicide, substance use, and mental health crisis — but the organizations serving them operate in isolation. A tribal child in foster care, a teenager struggling in a small town, and a young adult in recovery may each be connected to one program but invisible to the broader network of support that exists across the state. 42,000+ children lack access to afterschool programming. Rural communities lack licensed professionals. Cultural disconnection compounds the crisis for tribal youth.
The Proposed Solution
The Proposed Solution
The Proposed Solution
The South Dakota Youth Resilience Network proposes using the South Dakota Afterschool Network (SDAN) as a backbone organization to coordinate a coalition of nonprofits that share training, referral pathways, and community connections. Rather than building something new, this model creates funded connections between organizations already doing the work — ensuring every young person who touches any part of the network can be connected to the full continuum of support.
Building Connections Across the Continuum
This project creates funded pathways between organizations so that a young person identified at any point in the continuum can be connected to every resource they need. Trained adults at every site share a common framework through QPR, Mental Health First Aid, and CALM training delivered by Lost&Found, grounded in the science of Posttraumatic Growth — the evidence-based understanding that struggle can become a foundation for strength
How it works:
Backbone → Training Standard → Prevention → Cultural Connection → Vocational Identity → Recovery
Funding Alignment
This project aligns with South Dakota’s Rural Health Transformation Program ($189.4M awarded FY2026), which explicitly seeks community partners for behavioral health integration, community health worker expansion, workforce training, and crisis infrastructure. Coalition partners position as essential community-level delivery organizations alongside RHT-funded healthcare providers.
"The strongest communities emerge when we stop asking 'what can I accomplish?' and start asking 'what can we build together that outlasts us all?"
— Gary Hudiburgh, Founder and Managing Partner
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