2021 MTF Community Service Grantees Announced

Posted:Monday, October 25, 2021

The Massage Therapy Foundation is pleased to announce the award of four Community Service Grants for the 2021 granting cycle. MTF’s Community Service Grants bring the benefits of massage therapy to people who would otherwise not have access. To date MTF has granted over $500,000 to grantees ranging from compassionate touch for individuals experiencing homelessness at the end of life, to diabetes massage for underserved in rural Mexico, to using seated massage to decrease burnout and fatigue in Cancer Center staff, to seniors living with a disability receiving therapeutic massage, among many others. See our 2021 Grantees below.

Community Clinics for Disaster-Impacted Communities
$4,999.90
Integrated Healers Action Network
Santa Rosa, California

Integrative Healers Action Network (IHAN) provides safe, effective, and trauma-informed integrative medicine for climate disaster survivors, essential workers affected by climate disasters, and first responders. Founded in 2017, these clinics offer free massage therapy, acupuncture, chiropractic adjustments, homeopathic remedies, naturopathic medicine, and mind-body therapies like meditation and breath work to help clients reduce immediate pain, recover from their traumatic experiences, and build long-term resilience. Clients report an average pain reduction of three points, and overall decreased pain, anxiety, and insomnia after treatment. Support from Massage Therapy Foundation will treat two hundred individuals impacted by California wildfires with twenty-minute massage sessions and access to the full range of our other clinical offerings.

Reaching Underserved Hospice Patients with Compassionate Touch
$5,000
Capital Caring Health
Fredericksburg, Virginia
This grant is sponsored by a gift from Biotone

Capital Caring Health (CCH) provides patients and their families with advanced illness care of the highest quality. Different from traditional medical care, hospice care takes an interdisciplinary approach to relieving not just physical symptoms, but also emotional and spiritual suffering. Massage therapy has long been a part of holistic end-of-life care for hospice patients. Serving primarily patients and families who have been traditionally underserved by the health care system, who are the least likely to have the resources to access integrative services like massage therapy as part of their end-of-life care, also don’t have access to any free or volunteer massage therapy services provided by CCH.

By reaching these patients with best practice end of life care interventions, this project will be a part of CCH’s existing efforts to address healthcare disparities at end of life.

SHE Retreats: Trauma Informed Massage and Self-Care (2nd Year Grantee)
$5,000
DIVAS Who Win Freedom Center, Inc.
Athens, Georgia

This grant will support the SHE Retreats offered to women who are survivors of sex trafficking and/or overcoming addiction and trauma to aid them in successfully reentering society. This therapeutic method has proved to be a healthy and healing link between the various life skill-building therapeutic services and the gift of massage. The objective includes: fortifying connection peer to peer, cultivating recovery relationships, healing the trauma tissues within oneself through the modality of massage, decrease return to use and/or return to sex trade by developing a peer mentor bond with therapist and peer coaches, as well as emphasizing and exploring new modalities of self-care through massage. Massage therapist uses the power of touch, color therapy (light), sound, and smell (essential oils) for a full body experience by exercising four of the five senses in a holistic approach to massage.

Therapeutic Massage Clinic for Low-Income Older Adults Experiencing Chronic Pain
$5,000
Be Well Madison
Madison, Wisconsin
This grant is sponsored by a gift from Biotone

It is Be Well’s goal to continue to provide massage services to residents in the community in an effort to foster long-term relationships and sustainability as well as to expand these services to other low income and Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) community members. These community members face significant barriers associated with accessing holistic healthcare due to socioeconomic status, systemic discrimination, and low health literacy.

The project funded by MTF will continue to remove financial barriers associated with therapeutic massage, serve individuals of color who have been historically marginalized by society, and provide non-pharmacological interventions to address pain among older adults who may take multiple prescription medications for existing medical conditions.