10 - Asante Haughton: Surrounded by Stories

Accidental Intellectual

Speaker and Mental Health Advocate, Asante Haughton, joins us to discuss his advocacy work in the areas of mental health and crisis response reform, storytelling through music, doing what works for you and so much more!

Asante Haughton is a mental health advocate devoted to changing the world. He is focused on amplifying the stories of everyday people to illuminate gaps in the system while working to build bridges between community members and policy makers in order to find solutions to challenges together. Asante is the co-founder of the Reach Out Response Network, an organization advocating for non-police led mobile crisis emergency response. Asante is also a 2x TEDx speaker and a CAMH Difference Maker, awarded with the distinction of being one of the top 150 mental health influencers in Canada. When Asante is not speaking and advocating he is designing, managing and facilitating peer support training programs at Stella's Place, a youth mental health service agency in Toronto and hosting the web show, Cypher, which turns peer support stories into original songs by Juno nominated musicians. Young at heart, silly, self-deprecating and able to find a sports analogy for virtually anything, Asante tries not to take himself too seriously despite being engaged in the serious work of change-making!

Follow Asante on Twitter! Learn more about the Reach Out Response Network and Cypher online.

This episode of Accidental Intellectual is produced by Holly Boyne, Manon Feasson, Lauren Goldberg, Bronwyn Lamond, Rachael Lyon, Harrison McNaughtan, Stephanie Morris, Lee Propp, and Ariana Simone. Our theme music is by Alexandra Willet and our branding by Maxwell McNaughtan.

To learn more about the Accidental Intellectual podcast and get full show notes and a transcript of this episode, visit our website at www.accidentalintellectual.com.