#Black Mental Health Matters
Dr. Monique LeSarre wakes up in the middle of the night, over and over again, with the same thought: “I don’t want to fail anyone today.”
This is the pressure Dr. LeSarre feels as executive director of the Rafiki Coalition for Health and Wellness, a center for holistic well-being focused on San Francisco’s shrinking and besieged African American community. Begun in 1986 during the AIDS crisis to support a community routinely underserved by the healthcare system, Rafiki set out to create an agency based on healing and support, not neglect and discrimination.
Through its network model, Rafiki offers access to services including acupuncture, counseling, nutrition, dance therapy, massage, meditation, and health screenings. The goal, as much as anything, is to support people as whole beings, not as statistics.
“We have sacred relationships with people in our village,” Dr. LeSarre says.
What does this mean day-to-day, especially for mental health?
Dr. LeSarre tells a story of a woman who had fostered dozens of children, then lost her husband prior to COVID-19. Before dying, he urged her to keep looking out for youth who needed help. But after two strokes, she wasn’t sure she could continue. Rafiki helped her with acupuncture, massage, and physical therapy, and after regaining her health she decided to foster a boy. Rafiki set the family up with a therapist who worked with them for a number of years, and continues to do so on Zoom after COVID-19. Very recently, a judge signed off on an adoption.
The organization has grown under Dr. LeSarre’s leadership, earning the trust and funding of organizations like the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Its budget has also expanded in the last five years from $1.7 to just under $7 million. But that’s still a drop in the bucket, especially when an increase in health, housing, and political pressures is pushing Rafiki’s own practitioners to the brink.
“Our own staff can’t even get regular mental health support through our health insurance,” Dr. LeSarre says plainly. “The systems are failing.”
Despite her own fear of failing, Dr. LeSarre is not giving up
Rafiki Coalition for Health and Wellness
Donate now!www.rafikicoalition.org
Director of Development and Communications: Ta’Jae Brown
(415) 654-0491
Mission
Rafiki Coalition’s mission is to eliminate health inequities in San Francisco’s Black and marginalized communities through education, advocacy, and by providing holistic health and wellness services in a culturally affirming environment.
Begin to Build a Relationship
We know you care about where your money goes and how it is used. Connect with this organization’s leadership in order to begin to build this important relationship. Your email will be sent directly to this organization’s Director of Development and/or Executive Director.
For 40 years, Rafiki Coalition has shown that lasting health begins with trust, culture, and community. As we look to the future, we are building a permanent home for culturally affirming care, community healing, and opportunity – where every person feels seen, supported, and empowered to thrive. Together, we can ensure this legacy strengthens Black health in San Francisco for generations to come.
Forty Years of Culturally Affirming Care
Rafiki Coalition is working to make the Umoja Health Access Point hub self-sufficient, so care for San Francisco’s Black community never depends on who holds office.
• $5 million enables the outright purchase of the building that houses Umoja, plus renovations and construction to tailor the building for all future medical care.
• $2.5 million funds a year of the Hub’s critical programs and operations.
Every gift helps Rafiki reach its goal to expand its culturally affirming care to more of those in need.
Key Supporters
San Francisco Department
of Public Health
Mayor’s Office of Housing
& Community Development
Human Rights Commission
Stupski Foundation
Bothin Foundation
MWH/Webcor
Fremont Group Foundation
Kaiser Permanente