How Cate Helps BuildRight Workers Thrive

Keeping BuildRight’s team strong and healthy 

Making concrete blocks is skilled, physical work. It asks something real of the body, and BuildRight is committed to making sure every worker is well supported. Catherine Johnson helped design BuildRight’s daily rhythm from the ground up: 

“Listening to the body, to what ‘feels right’ or may even be painful, fosters healing and also prevents injuries. Understanding the body is also part of the trauma healing process.” 

A PhD in international nutrition, yoga therapist and wellness counselor, she knows that caring for the body isn’t separate from healing, it’s part of it. The rhythm she has designed means that each workday will begin with breath work and gentle stretches. These are slow, easy movements to awaken the major muscle groups. Core-strengthening exercises protect the lower back, and workers will learn smart lifting. Days close with both balance and breath work, light stretches to ease tense muscles and prepare the body to rest. Every practice, from the first breath to the last stretch, carries the same message: this body is worth caring for. 

We weave nourishment in just as intentionally. BuildRight will provide daily lunches prepared with locally available foods, rich in vitamins and minerals, and designed to fuel strenuous work, repair muscles and support the whole person. 

The Person Behind the Practice

Cate Johnson has spent decades working at the intersection of service, healing and community. During her distinguished career as a Senior Foreign Service Officer with USAID, she worked with vulnerable communities across Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Cate is also the founder of the Centre for the Healing Arts in Hürtgenwald, Germany, where she teaches holistic healing, meditation, yoga and contemplative prayer. She also serves as a board member of The Market Project.

Cate has spent a lifetime learning what it takes to help people be at their best, and she brings all of it to BuildRight. Her guidance is based on the understanding that “These efforts and actions are not merely niceties. They are grounded in years of research and best practices from all over the world.”

She points to the science: decades of evidence show how breathwork and gentle movement help release trauma from the body, virtually at the cellular level. She points to a nearby table and comments that shared meals signal safety, belonging and trust.

There is a moment she returns to when she talks about what community makes possible. She was in a room with Syrian refugees. They formed a circle, hands clasped and breathing as one. Together they rise into the shape of a tree, balanced on one leg and with arms lifted. “We notice,” she says, “that it is MUCH easier to balance when supporting one another than standing alone….Individual and family lives are enhanced, which also improves the community as a whole.”

The Experts Behind the Work

Your gift helps fund the programs inside BuildRight, the trauma healing groups, daily lunches, the movement practices that help workers stay strong, safe and heal.

Cate brings the expertise to know what a supportive community requires. Your generosity makes it real.