Care Through Touch Institute

I love what CTI brings to the community and the mission is inspiring! They do great work.

I donate to Care Through Touch through their Patreon account. As someone whose family has been affected by homelessness, I know the importance of treating our most vulnerable population with dignity. I'm profoundly impressed with the work CTI does and the important niche it fills in San Francisco.

There is nothing quite like this organization - the experience for volunteers and recipients alike is humanizing and healing and utterly joyful.

When I was living on the street and would go to Hospitality House or Martin De Porres, the day the massage ladies would come was the highlight of my week! I now have housing, but I still visit their sites because they bring me joy.

CTI is an incredibly inspiring organization and I feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity to volunteer with them. While there are many amazing services in the TL no one is doing what CTI does. They are able to really forge meaningful connections with their clients and create a safe, comforting space to express caring touch for folks who rarely receive it otherwise.

Care Through Touch is a wonderful organization. Their work touches so many people, and their volunteers and staff are kind and warm-hearted. I look forward to volunteering in the office again once it is possible to do so!

What a time we are in! We will need these services more than ever once the Pandemic passes! Human connection and touch are so important for both our mental and physical health. It also helps strengthen our immune systems. We could benefit having programs such as this one in every hospital and every program.

Volunteering with this non profit has shown me that profound change can happen through such simple acts of care. I am constantly amazed at the integrity, compassion, kindness and passion rooted in all the hearts and hands I get to work alongside on the streets of SF. I am forever changed and inspired by this work

CTI is a brilliant nonprofit. Their leadership and staff are deeply committed and passionate people who clearly care a tremendous amount about the people they serve. CTI leadership and staff consistently show up with care, compassion and competency and treat everyone they encounter with dignity and respect. CTI is a special and unique organization engaging in much needed healing work. I cannot recommend them enough.

CTI is dedicated to advocacy and care for their neighbors and community members currently experiencing homelessness. I've had the opportunity to volunteer just a few times so far with this group. I am deeply touched by the care and goodwill this organization fosters within the community, and of their actions and their mission of caring service to support their community.

I run The Healing WELL, a non-profit in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood. In addition to offering wellness sessions like Yoga, 12-Steps and Poetry, we offer 1x1 support. A Care Through Touch volunteer comes to The Healing WELL on Wednesdays, and offers powerful "healing touch" individually to our participants. The day after his session, one of our participants told us he hadn't slept that soundly in years. Our community members are marginally-housed and homeless - people who need and deserve to be touched and honored just like every one of us. Care Through Touch offers exactly that, and I'm grateful for their generosity and commitment.
Sincerely,
Kathy Curran, Director

A Care Through Touch massage is one of the greatest gifts one could give someone who lives outside. I was a Program Manager for a Bay Area nonprofit providing shower and hygiene services to the unsheltered community called Lava Mae from 2015-2019 when I learned about CTT. I planned and executed over 40 one day events called Pop Up Care Villages for the unsheltered guests of San Francisco and Oakland bringing as many resources to the curb near our showers as possible. I always put CTT at the heart of the village for good reason. Seeing our guests experience a skilled practitioner working with them brought tears of gratitude to my eyes every time they were able to attend. The massage professionals met the guests where they were and provided touch that would only be therapeutic, rather than normal massage, which can potentially trigger decades old abuse. Guests that didn't have access to the verbal or written language required to process trauma through traditional means could sit and receive a kind compassion chair massage that would foster their calm and resilient strength to work toward daily and long term goals with more challenges than any housed person could imagine. The staff at CTT deeply care for their clients and because this is so visible and understood, I worked hard to retain their presence at our events for grateful guests. Sometimes, if the booth was slow in attendance, they would provide service to our nonprofit staff, who lived most of their working week on the streets with our guests. The brilliant and healing effect of kind and gentle touch is deep and long lasting. Massage practitioners looking to serve folks who cannot afford this vital service would have a very rewarding experience working with CTT. Donors wishing to bring deep and lasting human connection to those living in the stressful and sometimes unforgiving environment of the streets would do very well to financially support this nimble and deeply impactful organization. CTT and its amazing volunteers change lives with the pure humankindness that can only be forged through the trust of touch. Visit https://lavamaex.org/ to learn more about Lava Maex and how you can help bring mobile hygiene and vital partners like CTT to neighbors living outside. Sincerely, Jamie Ramirez

I was recently asked to join the Board of Care Through Touch Institute, and I feel so honored. It is a privilege to be a part of an organization whose staff and volunteers are so dedicated to serving our large homeless population in San Francisco and the greater Bay Area. They offer massage and are so loving, nonjudgmental, and open hearted. Their compassion and touch create safety as well as mental, emotional and physical health and well being for this underserved population. I so admire the the "saints" who are a part of this amazing organization, and I believe the world needs more saints to care for the the homeless and ease the social injustices they endure daily.

Experiencing touch is so important for people who are experiencing homelessness because it connects them with others and fosters a sense of well-being and happiness.

Since Care through touch has been coming to the Dudley Apartments, the care just with the resident that are scene every other week here has done wonders for their health and emotional state. We are so very happy and pleased to have Heather here. She is not only caring, relatable and considerate, the residents just adore Heather. We are blessed to have this care

I have watched Mary Ann Finch, the founder of Care Through Touch, do her hands on work in the community and she is truly the Mother Theresa of the Tenderloin. Her warmth toward and embrace of the poorest and most-ignored population is an inspiration and grace to us all.

In my professional life I'm an LCSW and massage therapist who has worked with several non-profit organizations over the years and Care Through Touch stands out to me as an inspiring, well-organized and cherished service to the community. As a volunteer, I am so grateful for the opportunity to support disadvantaged folks in SF with touch but also to make meaningful heart-felt connections over time to those receiving massage as well as the staff and other volunteers. I'm so grateful for their service to the community, and their service and support to me as well.

Care Through Touch Institute provides an amazing service by allowing people to feel truly seen. They also help individuals become more attuned with how they are doing and help individuals really take a moment for themselves and truly rest. They have amazing dedicated volunteers.

I had the great pleasure of working with Care Through Touch Institute through a community collaborative in San Francisco. Their staff and volunteers are highly dedicated, caring, and mission-driven folks who provide a service like no other. They help restore dignity to people who feel invisible and hopeless. Truly and inspiring organization.

In a world where it seems so few care that so many are in pain and struggling, the work of the Care through Touch Institute is such a gift. As a priest, I am used to using my hands to bless and consecrate, but as a Care through Touch volunteer, I am able to use my hands as instruments of my heart. To unravel taut muscles and ease stress, yes, but also to convey in the deepest, most loving way that each client is seen and known as a beloved child of the universe, worthy of caring, loving touch. What could be better?

As a NICU RN we are taught compassionate touch to help premature babies thrive. Care through touch Institute uses therapeutic touch to help adults thrive. Without touch and caring interaction, many of the marginalized people of San Francisco are isolated and alone. We need food, shelter and clothing, and we need to feel cared about. Care through touch reminds us that we are all in this together.

I've been volunteering with Care Through Touch for 6 years. It gives me the opportunity to work with 'people on my edge.' You know the ones - those that don't look like you, walk like you, make the choices you make... the ones that much of society doesn't want to see or be involved with... the ones from whom you can learn so much because they have so much to give. Yep, an opportunity to grow through your giving.

I'm new to volunteering with CTI, but it's taught me a lot about compassion and overcoming fears around touching people who are different than me.

I have been working with Care Through Touch for over ten years. I started out as a volunteer, and grew to learn more about the community that CTI serves, and the utter necessity of their care and time given to their clients. It is an honor to serve on the board of this organization.

I happened upon Care Through Touch as I was retiring from the position of school superintendent in upstate New York. I needed to find a way to care for my mother who was dying of Huntington's Disease. Care Through Touch taught me how to touch my mother in soothing and compassionate ways. As a result the facility in which she was being cared for adopted Care Through Touch for similar patients. To this day it is one of the best services that they have been able to offer for patients that are suffering with this horrific disease. I will forever be in indebted to the training that I received at the CTI Institute.

Hospitality House started a partnership with Care Through Touch (CTI) over 10 years ago. Mary Ann Finch and her team would come into Hospitality House Programs and do chair massages for the homeless population we serve here in San Francisco in the Tenderloin and along the Sixth Street Corridor. CTI team would enter Hospitality House two self-help centers, the Community Building Program and Hospitality House 30 bed men's shelter twice weekly to give chair massages to all who are interested.

The Massage Therapist would massage the backs of our most vulnerable population, a population that is seen but not seen and some for years have not been touch by another human. CTI also once yearly would come and massage the feet of our clients on Holy Friday with gifts bags in hand.

When a client enters the room for a massage, some are tire and ache from a night of sleeping on the hard payment out in the cold, a restless night in one of the shelters, or hesitant and cannot comprehend that another person would actually want to touch them yet along give them a massage. The end result is picture perfect! When a client exits the massage room you see on their face a since of peace, acceptance and love even if it is just for today.

CTI is one in a million and comes with unconditional love!

Care Through Touch Institute has brought so much to our community members. They are always welcoming and giving our community members a sense of humanity. CTTI gives chair messages to our community members that mostly do not have homes and have been shunned from family and society. Having someone come giving them a chair message lifts their spirits and looking forward to the next time CTI comes!!!

One client told me, "After one of your massages I don't feel like hitting people anymore".

Another one said, "The massage is gone once I leave this room, but the feeling stays inside me all day".

Many of the folks have been on the streets a long time and feel forgotten. They often start to cry and say something like: "You see me!"

I had just returned from spending nearly a year volunteering in street clinics and leprosariums in India, particularly Calcutta. I was committed to finding the poorest of the poor here at home in San Francisco. That's when I came upon the Care Through Touch Institute in San Francisco. Their mission, much like Mother Teresa's in Calcutta was to touch with care the most underserved and marginalized people in the community. I've been a part of this inspiring Institute's life ever since. They live and breathe compassion.

CTI’S mission is to accompany people who are poor and homeless through our ministry of seated massage therapy and compassionate supportive presence. We accomplish this through our training programs in care through touch that prepare spiritually and socially conscious women and men to skillfully touch and support marginalized people, thereby creating a healthier, safer and more caring community. We have our incredible founder, Mary Ann Finch and a new Executive Director, Heather Dickison who are leading/running this organization and a tiny part time staff and about 12 volunteers who offer healing touch to the greater Tenderloin community. We are small but mighty! This is the most important work ever...to touch those who society deems "untouchable". To care for those most on the margins by being truly present to them, companioning them, being with them, and loving them. Lives have been transformed by our healing touch.

Care Through Touch is a unique and deeply thoughtful organization that serves the most vulnerable people in our community. Through gentle loving touch and massage, Care Through Touch volunteers bring comfort, compassion, love, and justice to our homeless, elderly, and terminally ill neighbors.

There is no other organization out there that is doing the type of work that Care Through Touch does. It truly is a life changing experience both for the volunteers as well as the clients. It helps build a community of care amongst people who often are lacking this most basic human need (the need for love and connection). Loving therapeutic touch can help people access deep trauma so that they can begin to heal old wounds, helps people feel more connected and loved, helps people enter back into being in their body, helps reduce stress, helps relieve aching bodies tired from carrying belongings around and sleeping on hard concrete sidewalks, and so much more. This organization is truly special.

This is the most giving, professional and compassionate charity I've ever witnessed. Mary Ann Finch, Executive Director and Founder is compassion embodied. I've met Care Through Touch's homeless clients, observed their service programs first hand, and met with board and staff. This is a most special and amazing program that is 100% about service to those extreme needs. It would be impossible to express my high regard for Ms. Finch and the Care Through Touch organization. It's a privilege to donate to their programs. Babs Moley, Owner, River Rock Health Spa