About The Catori Foundation

A 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization incorporated in Florida.

Four programs. One umbrella. A complete system of support for the people most likely to fall through the cracks: survivors of domestic violence, children and teens in foster care, and anyone who has needed mental health support they couldn't access or afford.

The foundation is pre-operational. The infrastructure is being built deliberately, carefully, and without cutting corners. Every program has been designed with the people it serves at the center. The people are what matters most here.

There will be obstacles. There will be funding gaps and bureaucratic walls and moments where the distance between what exists and what is needed feels impossible. None of that is new. The people apart of this have been navigating impossible distances their entire life.

The difference now is that we are building the bridge instead of just crossing it.

The Catori Foundation was not built from research. It was built from memory.

The founder didn't learn about domestic violence from a textbook. She grew up watching it. And like most children who grow up inside it, she carried the blueprint into her own life, into relationships that looked familiar, felt familiar, that she assumed were just how love worked.

It took years before she was able to build a net, and a life she was happy in, when no one is building one with her. In that time, she moved through every system this foundation is designed to fix. And she learned, firsthand, exactly where each one breaks.

While training to become a foster parent, the universe decided she gets an in-depth, inside look.

She saw all the good intent and all the harmful gaps, the placements that hurt children while the system looked away, the abuse that didn't meet the threshold, the social work connections that made excuses, the loopholes found at children's expense. The families who kept fostering. The kids who were a paycheck. The ones who tried and the ones who loved. Every one. None of that nuance moves the system an inch. The worst part? Some of them knew. But the system moved slower than the harm did.

She never forgot what that system felt like. And she built something because of it.

On the spectrum. Big feelings, a teenage boy's frustration, and a mind that needed more than most programs were designed to give. She lost count of how many times he was turned away. "He has autism, we aren't equipped.", "He was in the hospital too many times.", "For unexplained, unelaborated 'safety reasons'." Every rejection felt like the real reason was he wasn't the right kind of needy. Program after program, the door closed.

For years, she hid her own mental health struggles for various reasons, from afforadability, to not being believed, to fear of losing her job, and sometimes she was just simply overlooked by the professionals.

It wasn't until years later that she even knew affordable care existed. The people around her were navigating the same darkness. Nobody knew where to look. That's the gap. Not the absence of resources. The absence of a bridge.

Every program in this foundation was built from a gap Dyani lived inside.

The Porcelain DV House because she needed a shelter that believed her without requiring a clean story.
Lily House for the homeless because she saw people turned away for not fitting the right category.
The Raft's mental health programs because her family and friends kept hitting closed doors, and because she spent years not knowing help was within reach.
The Cottages and The Lodge foster homes because she watched her own children placed somewhere that hurt them, while the system looked away.
Adult Living transitional foster program because she knows what it means to be handed nothing and told to figure it out.

This is not a fleeting thing. It is not a passion project or a pivot. It is the thing she was always going to build because she isn't the only person who was always going to need it.