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Quick Exit
About AAI
We started because too many people in Pike County were being told to wait.
The Amplified Advocacy Initiative is a Pike County, Alabama nonprofit founded in 2024. We provide affordable trauma-informed therapy, youth leadership programming, peer support for helping professionals, and free community events — and we work where the gaps are.
Our mission
Amplify the people the system talks over.
In a town this size, the distance between needing help and getting it is measured in things people do not have: a waitlist slot, a copay, gas money, a caseworker who is not already carrying forty families, someone who believes them the first time.
We exist in that distance. We keep therapy at $45 with a sliding scale offered before anyone has to ask. We build programs for the people who are usually an afterthought — teenagers, grandparents raising grandchildren, court-referred clients, and the clinicians and first responders who absorb the whole county's worst days and are expected to be fine.
We are small, we are local, and we would rather do four things properly in Pike County than ten things thinly across the state.
There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
- Founded
- 2024
- Based in
- Pike County, Alabama
- Structure
- 501(c)(4) nonprofit
- Sessions start at
- $45
What we believe
Four commitments, written as things you can hold us to.
01
Being heard is the beginning
Not a privilege, not a reward for being well enough to ask nicely. The first thing we offer anyone is the experience of being believed.
02
Brave space, not safe space
Safety is a floor. Brave means you can say the true thing, at your pace, and it will be met — not managed.
03
Cost is not a filter
$45 sessions, a sliding scale offered before it's requested, and free community programming. Price transparency is published, not negotiated in private.
04
We serve the helpers too
Burnout in clinicians, social workers, and first responders is a community mental health problem. We treat it like one.
Credentials
- Doctor of Social Work (DSW)
- Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker (LICSW), Alabama
- Founder and Executive Director, AAI
Founder
Chelsea Singleton, DSW, LICSW
Licensed clinical social worker, doctorate in social work, and the person who will actually pick up the phone when you call.
I started AAI because I kept meeting people who had already tried. They had called the number, sat on the waitlist, explained themselves to four different intake workers, and eventually decided it was easier to keep carrying it alone. That is not a shortage of resilience. That is a system that makes you audition for help.
My clinical work is with survivors of trauma, kinship and grandparent-led families, teenagers who are holding more than anyone has noticed, and clients who arrive because a court told them to. I do not need you to be articulate about it, and I do not need you to start at the beginning. We can start anywhere.
The other half of my work is with the helpers — clinicians, social workers, teachers, dispatchers, first responders. I run consultation groups and deliver training because I have watched too many good people leave this field quietly, and because I know exactly how that happens.
If you are reading this and deciding whether to reach out: you do not have to be sure. A fifteen-minute consultation costs nothing and commits you to nothing. Ask me anything you want, including whether I am the right fit — and if I am not, I will help you find who is.
Leadership & governance
Who makes the decisions here.
We are a young organization and we would rather say that plainly than imply a structure we do not have yet.
AAI is led by its founder and guided by an advisory group being assembled from local clinicians, educators, and community members. As board and advisory roles are filled, they will be listed here with names, roles, and affiliations.
If you work in Pike County and want to help govern this organization, we want to hear from you.
The tax picture
We are a 501(c)(4), and we say so before you donate.
A 501(c)(4) is a social welfare organization. It is a nonprofit, but it sits in a different section of the tax code from the more familiar 501(c)(3) charity — which means contributions to AAI are not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes.
We put that on the donate page, in the footer, and here, because nobody should find it out at tax time. We are reviewing our structure with an accountant, and if anything changes we will update these pages first.