Facilitate a biweekly peer support and skill-sharing club for anxious activists.

Run a biweekly online club for people who care about the world and are stressed about it. The Nervous System is part peer support, part practical skill-sharing. Each session should make space for people to share what they're feeling, identify ways to effect change, and provide tips, tools, and support to help a person who is anxious (or otherwise struggling with their mental health) and/or neurodivergent to participate.

Sessions might look different from week to week. One meeting might focus on preparing for a protest as a sensory-sensitive or anxious person, covering things like noise-cancelling headphones, breathing exercises, frequent breaks, and ways to support a cause without being physically present. Another might tackle managing news consumption so that you have the information you need without the burnout and compassion fatigue.

Sessions happen every other week. On off-weeks, you will share a resource, prompt, or check-in in the club's Discord channel to maintain connection between meetings. You will also use off-weeks to plan upcoming sessions.

The group caps at 10 participants. If the group grows beyond what one person can handle, we will recruit a co-facilitator.

Important: This is a peer support group, not therapy. The facilitator is not expected to be a mental health professional and should not provide clinical advice. If a participant is in crisis or needs professional support, direct them to appropriate resources. MFU can help identify those resources if needed.

Essential skills:

• Comfort holding space for difficult emotions without trying to fix them
• Ability to balance emotional check-ins with practical, actionable content
• Sensitivity to different capacities and comfort levels, including neurodivergent needs
• Willingness to keep sessions structured and predictable

NOT required:

• Mental health credentials or clinical training

Operative must provide:

• An account with the digital platform that will host the club meetings
• Preparation of session topics, resources, and discussion prompts
• Between-session engagement in the Discord channel on off-weeks
• Promotion and participant recruitment for the club

MFU will provide:

• An interest form on the MFU website to help identify the best times for the meetings
• A scheduling app on the MFU website that allows people to sign up for the club
• A channel on the MFU Discord server for meetings and between-session discussion
• Help locating mental health resources and crisis referral information
• Promotion and participant recruitment for the club

You are welcome to use these sources to help you get started:

• Activist Handbook's burnout guide covers the stages of activist burnout, how to recognize it, and strategies for prevention at the individual and group level.
• Sage EF Coaching's guide to neurodivergent barriers in activism identifies five specific barriers neurodivergent people face when trying to get involved, including sensory overload, decision fatigue, and rejection sensitivity.
• The Autistic Self Advocacy Network's accessibility resources include practical tools for making group spaces more accessible, such as color communication badges and guides to sensory, physical, and cognitive accessibility.
• Laurence Cox's "How Do We Keep Going?" is a detailed, readable paper on personal sustainability in social movements, examining the causes of burnout and strategies for addressing it at individual, organizational, and movement levels.

For general questions, you can message your handler through your dashboard, contact @Owlett on Discord, or email info@myflyinguniversity.org.

If you have an idea for a different approach to all or part of this mission, please feel free to reach out before you get started!