How We Work
Our goal is to improve young people's mental health & well-being. We do this by giving organizations and innovation projects “room to breathe” so that they can equip San Francisco youth and the adults who support them with the knowledge and practices to grow their mental health & well-being.
Our Programming
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Room to Be Well (R2BeWell)
Room to Be Well (R2BeWell) is an R2B-led initiative that offers well-being programming combined with a stipend to each educator on campus at our partner schools within SFUSD. This school year, we will work with over 700 educators at 13 schools.
Our goal is to help educators improve their own well-being and in turn, positively impact the well-being of their students.
IMPACT
1,349
Educators engaging in well-being practices since the start of the program
LEARNINGS
This stipend has shown that educators appreciate and value trust, flexibility, autonomy, and joy when it comes to their well-being. When those elements are in place, their well-being can grow and the impact can translate to their students!
Our Partners
Health Career Connection
R2B partnered with Health Career Connection (HCC) to sponsor summer internships in the mental and behavioral health space.
In 2024, R2B sponsored 9 HCC interns who are working with SF-based agencies that are focused on supporting the mental and behavioral health of children aged 0-12.
Throughout our partnership, all interns we sponsored were recent or upcoming college graduates who were interested in becoming healthcare professionals. Each of these individuals identifies as first-gen or minority.
LEARNINGS
We hoped to learn if exposure and experience in the behavioral and mental health space would be enough to positively influence a young person’s career trajectory in this space as we know that the mental health professional pipeline is in need of more workers and a more diverse workforce.
Our interns consistently noted receiving great professional and personal value both from their internship experience and from the support and network that HCC provided. In some cases our interns were offered full-time jobs with their host organizations.
IMPACT
13
Interns discovering their authentic path to a career in mental and behavioral health
Greater Good in Education
R2B has partnered with Greater Good in Education (GGE) to support their efforts to grow online educator communities of practice (CoPs) to educators and schools that are interested in bringing well-being teaching and practices to their professions and schools.
We hope to learn both about the demand (will people sign up?) and the design (what is the best way to structure the experience for the most impact?) for CoPs. We also hope to learn if and how the impact of an educator’s well-being is translated to that of their students.
IMPACT
2,000+
Participants enrolled in the launch of the GGE well-being course for educators
LEARNINGS
The educators who participated in “The Teaching & Learning for Greater Good” pilot in the spring of 2024 enjoyed their experience and asked for more! An overwhelming majority reported noticing increases in their own well-being, and a significant majority reported noticing an impact on the students they served back in the classroom.
This data suggests that an educator learning community is a key piece in enhancing educators' (and their students’) well-being.
As our partnership continues, we hope to highlight more specifics around what pieces of well-being can be mapped from the educator to the student.
The Primary School
R2B partnered with The Primary School to bring their Bridge to Preschool program to early childhood centers in San Francisco. Through the program, both parents and their 2.5-5 year olds receive social and emotional support and training as they prepare for the beginning of their school journeys.
In the spring and summer of 2021 we supported the pilot of the Bridge to Preschool Program at a Wu Yee community center for families in the Bayview area. In the fall of 2024, we partnered again with The Primary School to expand this program to more cohorts of families in the Bayview.
LEARNINGS
Our learnings from the 2021 pilot showed us that parents need and want this type of education and support, as well as this type of community. Families enjoyed their experiences so much that they asked for more opportunities to stay together as a cohort. Parents also noted an increase in their confidence to support the social and emotional growth of their young ones as they enter school.
We hope to continue to learn both about the demand for this type of support from young families in SF, and about how the impact of the program could potentially influence district and state policy around early childhood education and family support.
IMPACT
20% → 70%
Before the program, only 20% of participating parents felt prepared for their child's transition to preschool; after the program, 70% of participating parents felt prepared.
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Seneca Family of Agencies
R2B partnered with Seneca to fund the Unconditional Education (UE) Coach roles at three SFUSD elementary schools.
The UE Coach supports the social, emotional, and behavioral needs of the students - everything from classroom-wide behavior routines and structures, to personalized plans for high-needs students, to infusing healing-centered and trauma-informed practices in all aspects of the school. They do this with the goal of creating safe and joyful environments for all students and the adults who serve them.
The UE Coach role is designed to last 3-5 years, after which the administrators/social workers of the school take on the work of maintaining the systems that have been put in place.
IMPACT
606
Students supported by the leadership of a school-based Unconditional Education Coach
LEARNINGS
We learned that the UE Coach role is a highly impactful role within a school, both for the students and the adults who support them.
Our partner schools have not been structured and staffed to accommodate adequate oversight of the social-emotional well-being needs of their students. With the help of a UE Coach, each of our three sites were able to reach most, if not all, of their social, emotional, behavioral, and systems-wide goals. Students and educators felt supported and wanted more.
Some schools were able to secure additional outside funding for this role to live on, suggesting that schools want their UE Coach to last more than 3-5 years.
Peer Health Exchange
R2B partnered with Peer Health Exchange (PHE) to support both their in-school health education (mental, sexual, physical, and social) classes for 9th graders and their web-based app called Selfsea.
Through a previous grant supporting PHE's strategic plan, we learned how beneficial the in-school courses were to young peoples’ well-being. Our goal with this additional 3-year grant was to understand the effectiveness of a digital component in a post-pandemic environment.
LEARNINGS
We learned that a digital component is most useful for students seeking support with their mental health and is extremely useful to students who reside in areas where access to health resources is limited or restricted.
So, the student engagement with digital programming is there, but what actually moves the needle on young peoples’ well-being?
While PHE’s original design has always been a near-peer model (i.e., college students teaching the health content to 9th graders at school), we learned that a peer-to-peer model (i.e., high school seniors teaching health to high school freshmen) works very well too. In fact, schools and students are strong proponents of it because it benefits both the education of the younger students and the leadership of the older students.
Overall, our biggest takeaway was that while a digital component is useful, it is most useful as a supplement, not a replacement of the in-person experience. Human connection is vital to a young person’s health development.
IMPACT
500,000+
Young people reached on web/mobile version of selfsea since its launch
Millennium School
In September 2020, R2B funded the membership of 150 SFUSD educators in Forum for the 2020-2021 school year.
Forum is an online circle group where 6-8 educators sit in a virtual circle with one another and are led by a trained facilitator through a series of social and emotional sharing and listening exercises. The exercises are centered around a topic in well-being.
The goal was to increase teacher well-being as a way to indirectly influence student well-being.
IMPACT
88%
of participating educators described the Forum program as valuable or highly valuable professional development and a good use of time
LEARNINGS
We learned that even during a pandemic, 88% of educators described the program as valuable or highly valuable professional development and a good use of time.
Participants noted the following changes, all of which were statistically significant:
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an increase in self care
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an increase in embodied social and emotional learning skills
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an increase in overall well-being
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an increase in professional relationships
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an increase in mindfulness practice.