It all started with a door.
Laura Rose says she had a difficult time opening a door to an outreach center in Salem, Ore. because she's in a wheelchair.
"It's too heavy for me to operate. I have to use my cell phone and I literally have to call the front desk over there to get someone to come out and get me," Laura Rose tells us.
That made the resources Laura Rose needs as a survivor of domestic violence more difficult to access. "I feel sad for our disability community for people with disabilities like mobility impairment," she says.
That's when she got the idea to open every door to everyone. With a background in public policy, fine arts, and building websites, Laura Rose developed PeerGalaxy in 2019. It's a portal for online and over-the-phone peer support, recovery, and wellness activities for adults and youth.
"One of the things that we really hold near and dear is making everything free or scholarship, so when you come to the site you don't have to worry," Laura Rose says.
With almost 100,000 offerings each month, PeerGalaxy became an essential resource when the pandemic hit.
Joe Conklin says he was able to find support on the site for his mental illness. "If you have a pulse basically you can find something on PeerGalaxy for it," Conklin says.
ElAnya Nightingale-Warren says she met people to lean on while in long-term recovery. "The comradery is what is really important to me because I'm a people person," Nightingale-Warren says.
Larry, with a rare brain condition, discovered that he wasn't alone. "The guy right next to me in this meeting right in this room found out he had the same thing I did," Larry says. Now he's decked out in PeerGalaxy swag almost every day.
Breanna Mcleod says she found even more purpose in her cerebral palsy diagnosis. "I couldn't imagine my life without it," Mcleod says.
Kevin Fitts says PeerGalaxy helped him become a leader for those with schizophrenia. "I hear voices every day and have hallucinations that something's on my skin. It was peer galaxy that I heard about a group called Hearing Voices." Fast forward a few years, Fitts is now the co-host of a national Hearing Voices group.
Just like Fitts, they're all now offering that peer support to others through PeerGalaxy. "Now that I found my way out of the fire, why wouldn't I go back in and help find other people who are in the fire find their way out of the fire," says Conklin.
It takes volunteers and donations, but PeerGalaxy also gets funding from the Oregon Health Authority and the State of Oregon. Fitts, who happens to be a nationally-recognized mental health lobbyist, helped secure that funding.
"The amount of money that funds this every year is what administrators at the OHA call 'budget dust.' Don't confuse the amount of money that goes into funding this project with its reach and with its sophistication," Fitts tells us.
PeerGalaxy isn't quite reaching the ends of the universe, but just a year after launch, Laura Rose says the website exceeded 2 million hits. Three and a half years after launch, PeerGalaxy has over 7 million hits and it's reaching people across the globe in different languages.
"One person referred their mother to the site and she's from Ethiopia and she used google translate and she said she understood the site perfectly and she got the support she needed," Laura Rose tells us.
PeerGalaxy plans to keep growing to the furthest asteroid, so nothing is standing in the way of getting people the help they need, not money, not a pandemic, not even a door.