Our Story

Hi! We’re Amy Butler and Megan Taylor, the co-founders of Gap Relief. Our Gap Relief journey has been quite the wild ride, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.  We and our incredible team can’t imagine doing anything other than fanning into flame the mission at our core: Helping the Helpers Build Resilient Communities. 

We are a non-profit composed of a trauma-informed multi-disciplinary team with a common goal: to support and empower community servants as they seek to protect, aid, and offer healing to their communities, whoever and wherever they may be.

In addition to telling you who we are, it’s important to us that we tell you how we got here. This is our story. 

After years of unknowingly and simultaneously developing an individual passion for those serving on the front lines of trauma, we found ourselves on mission together in 2016 when our friends and international nonprofit leaders experienced trauma on the ground.  Assuming our first international trip together would be nothing more than that - an international trip - we rounded up three other teammates and boarded a plane for Africa.

We spent the next five days providing trauma care and attachment-informed training to international leaders and local professionals. Over those five days, passion expanded our vision as we experienced layers of pain, stress, and trauma begin to alleviate from our international partners - many of whom had expressed their uncertainty of their ability to stay in the field. Not only that, but those partners expressed new excitement for their work, feeling better equipped and supported to tackle the mission in front of them.

On the plane back to Northwest Arkansas, we knew this trip was not in fact a one-time-thing, but just the beginning of something new.

The following months led to additional international trips as well as the beginning of several local partnerships with other trauma-exposed organizations. Dreams of well-resourced leaders and supported front-line workers continued to grow, and in 2018, Gap Relief was established as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

Since then, Gap Relief has developed and facilitated numerous personalized trauma and resiliency training experiences, retreats, and experiences both locally and across the globe. In addition, our team has provided countless hours of one-on-one and team counseling, consultation, and crisis debriefing services. We believe when we all come together to hold each other’s arms up - we are capable of things we never thought possible.

So more specifically, who do we serve? In short, our eyes are on the helpers–those that we consider to be part of sectors of the workforce that are often identified as “trauma-impacted.” Our primary sectors are international non-profit leaders, local non-profit leaders, first responders, medical and mental health professionals, educators, adoptive and foster families, and government. 

We want to support and empower community servants in trauma-exposed sectors with the care and equipping they need to accomplish their missions. 

We want to eliminate the tragedy of their burnout due to the impact of pain, stress, and trauma they encounter.

We want to be there to hold their arms up so they can Keep. Going.

We have their back and we would love for you to have ours. Thanks for supporting us at Gap Relief.