The Iona Initiative will emerge to be the nonprofit wing of the Center for Linguistic Health. It exists to extend the reach of resources like Lingwell to those who would otherwise not have access. It also seeks to develop programming that uses Lingwell as a tool for community resilience, collective reflection, and deep cultural listening.
While Lingwell offers individual support through guided dialogue, Iona serves the broader mission: to bring this support into communities, institutions, and populations facing structural barriers, emotional strain, or collective grief. Iona partners with organizations to distribute access, design programming, and cultivate practices that use language to foster belonging, coherence, and change.
Rooted in years of writing-based engagement with frontline workers, faith communities, trauma survivors, students, and caregivers, the Iona Initiative builds on a simple but powerful premise: that people need better ways to name what they’re going through, and that structured language work can help.
Its offerings include:
- Subsidized and donated Lingwell access for underserved groups
- Community-centered workshop models using Lingwell in dialogue with live facilitation
- Program design and implementation support for institutions working at the intersection of care, education, and social change
- Cultural strategy and linguistic health consultation for groups navigating identity, transition, or trauma
Iona is not a standalone program. It is a practice architecture—a set of evolving methods for using Lingwell in communal and systemic contexts. Where Lingwell accompanies the individual, Iona scaffolds the social. Together, they form a holistic vision of language as a site of care.
Matthew Leavitt Brown 