The How
Our goal is to grow 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 Partners
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Room to Be Well (R2BeWell)
Room to Be Well (R2BeWell) is an initiative led by the San Francisco Education Fund and the R2B Project that offers well-being programming combined with a stipend to each educator on campus at our partner schools within SFUSD. This school year, we are working with almost 900 educators at 16 SFUSD elementary schools.
Our goal is to help educators improve their own well-being and in turn, positively impact the well-being of their students.
IMPACT
1,886+
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!
Health Career Connection
R2B continues to partner with Health Career Connection (HCC) to invest in future talent, providing a total of 90 new San Francisco-based behavioral health internship opportunities during the summers of 2025, 2026, and 2027. This number has grown from our first two internship cohorts of 4 students in summer 2023 and 9 students in summer 2024.
We are excited to see how this continued partnership can help shape the mental health workforce for young people in San Francisco.
All interns have been recent or upcoming college graduates who were interested in becoming healthcare professionals, and 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
103
Interns discovering their authentic path to a career in mental and behavioral health
Project Avary
R2B has partnered with Project Avary to support a total of 32 San Francisco students aged 8-12 in their Project Avary experience over the course of 4 years.
In the beginning of their Project Avary experience– which entails online support groups, overnights during the long weekends of the school year, and a week-long summer camp experience– we hope to learn more about the strengths and the challenges of the youth of incarcerated or detained parents and how best to design a pathway to success.
IMPACT
32
San Francisco students aged 8-12 will engage in online support groups, overnights, and summer camps with Project Avary over the next four years
LEARNINGS
All ten of the first group of sponsored students completed one or two online support group sessions, and 9/10 students completed both one weekend overnight AND one overnight summer camp session! At least 80% of this group of ten students showed growth in the following seven factors: sense of belonging, healthy attachment with adults (100%), emotional regulation skills, conflict resolution skills, self-esteem, perseverance, and leadership skills in just one year (or less) of the Project Avary experience.
While it’s difficult to determine exactly how many San Francisco students have incarcerated or detained parents, we learned that the presence of “family”– given or chosen– is imperative to the mental health and well-being of these young people who often feel shame, guilt, and/or fear around their familial circumstances.
Mission Graduates
R2B has partnered with Mission Graduates to expand their Wellness Coordinator model for five campuses across SFUSD and build a learning community of practice across the school teams. The project seeks to equip more students with social-emotional tools and solidify trusted adult relationships that help young people thrive. Mission Graduates will integrate social-emotional learning (SEL) into the full school experience, spanning the school day and‬ after-school hours.
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We hope to learn about how the Wellness Coordinators’ support impacts students’ ability to manage emotions, resolve conflict, identify caring adults, and feel safe and belong at school. We also hope school staff increase their knowledge of SEL and trauma-informed strategies to better support academic success, and families feel more connected to the broader school community.
Beats Rhymes and Life
R2B has partnered with Beats Rhymes and Life (BRL) to provide young San Franciscans opportunities to engage in several of their signature engagements, including: sessions with their Mobile Studio bus at various San Francisco youth-serving locations, two Therapeutic Activity Groups (TAGS), where a group of 8 youth consistently meet to create music culminating in a performance, and several Like Skills Workshops focused on teaching social and emotional skills through music.
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Through this partnership, we hope to learn more about the efficacy of hip hop therapy for 8-12 year olds and discover more opportunities where we can be meeting and serving the mental health needs of San Francisco’s young people where they are.
Homeless
Prenatal
Program
R2B has partnered with Homeless Prenatal Program (HPP) to enhance their Wellness Center, which provides courses, workshops, supplies and community support to prenatal, perinatal, and postnatal families. The Wellness Center serves as a key entry point to other services for HPP families.
Some clients even leave with jobs, as the Wellness Center often supports the training and education of their clients, so they can go on to become Community Health Workers, serving both families within HPP’s Wellness Center and beyond.
Greater Good in Education
R2B has partnered with Greater Good in Education (GGE) to support their efforts to bring together San Francisco-serving educators (40/year for 3 years) in online Communities of Practice (CoPs) centered around well-being topics. Additionally, this partnership supports the pilot of a “Greater Good Schools Fellowship”, where five San Francisco educators from Year 2 and Year 3 cohorts get the opportunity to join a year-long CoP and to receive $5k to start a well-being project back at their school site.
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.
UCSF Child Trauma Research Program
R2B has partnered with the UCSF Child Trauma Research Program (CTRP) to continue expanding its signature Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) work to San Francisco’s family-serving nonprofit organizations. The effort would a) recruit and train postdoctoral fellows for placement in SF’s community-based agencies and public health system, and b) create Communities of Practice for clinicians and supervisors in family service agencies implementing Child-Parent Psychotherapy.
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We hope to learn how Child-Parent Psychotherapy contributes to positive early intervention, mental health promotion, and long-term success for SF's most vulnerable families. The anticipated outcomes include ensuring safe, nurturing relationships within the families starting in pregnancy, championing community awareness to decrease the stigma around trauma-informed treatment, and building the mental health workforce by training post-doctoral fellows annually.
Playworks
R2B has partnered with Playworks to enable the Beacon Teams (via the San Francisco Beacon Initiative (SFBI) at three elementary school sites (Leonard R. Flynn Elementary, El Dorado Elementary, and Malcolm X Academy) to implement the Playworks TagTeam model. The TagTeam approach integrates play throughout the school day, during recess, lunch, and transitions, and during after-school programming, encouraging opportunities for physical activity and safe, meaningful play.
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Through this partnership, we hope to learn more about how the TagTeam model moves the needle on critical well-being outcomes, including students’ sense of belonging, attendance, conflict resolution, and leadership skills.
Wu Yee Children's Services
R2B has partnered with Wu Yee Children’s Services to enhance the 22 in-person socializations that the Home Visiting Program hosts at various sites throughout San Francisco each year for its 110 families. Encouraging and enhancing in-person community is an effective way to lower isolation and increase connection and belonging for families in the early years of child rearing.
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Through partnering with Wu Yee, we seek to understand what gets a family to attend and return to a group socialization. Furthermore, we hope to discover how to get families to stay together in community with others, fostering lasting community connections beyond the events themselves. We also hope to see how these socialization experiences can further open up new career pathways for the parents/caregivers of Wu Yee’s families.
Positive Coaching Alliance
R2B has partnered with the Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA) to deepen its collective impact and accelerate progress toward its 2026 goal of 6,500 new sports opportunities for 4-12 year olds in San Francisco, which equates to supporting about 430 coaches. R2B now joins PCA’s “SF Sports Equity Coalition” Meetings, listening to and collaborating with their “Workforce and Development Action Team”.
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Over the course of this partnership, we hope to learn more about what it takes to recruit, train, and retain San Francisco coaches so that San Francisco youth, aged 4-12, have positive sport experiences.
Real Options for City Kids (R.O.C.K.)
R2B has partnered with Real Options for City Kids’ (R.O.C.K.) to support their wellness specialists and program team members in providing responsive, youth-centered social/emotional activities, facilitating healthy play during recess and lunch, and delivering collective and individual early literacy supports across Visitacion Valley’s TK-8 public schools.
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​We hope to learn more about how a focus on mental health, well-being, engagement, and belonging contributes to positively impacting community-wide education benchmarks like early literacy and reductions in schoolwide chronic absenteeism. We also hope to learn about how R.O.C.K.’s approaches to teaching and evaluating Social Emotional Learning inform the work of other organizations with whom we work, as well as the broader youth development, SEL, and college success fields. We are also curious about the impact of zeroing in on a specific community with a hyperlocal service focus,
Safe & Sound
R2B has partnered with Safe & Sound to support the Community Pathway, an initiative built to coordinate an upstream system of family support and to reimagine, expand, and align services across San Francisco’s network of Family Resource Centers and family support organizations.
Though this partnership, we hope to learn:
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How effectively early, coordinated, and community-based interventions reduce child welfare involvement, strengthen family stability, and improve overall well-being.
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What key elements are necessary for integrating community-based, healthcare and public systems in creating a seamless prevention pathway for families before crises occur.
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What practices and policies best ensure that families receive support rooted in trust, equity, and dignity, rather than surveillance or punishment?
Transformative Educational Leadership (TEL)
R2B has partnered with Transformative Educational Leadership (TEL) to sponsor ten San Francisco-serving education leaders (Principals, Social Workers, District Office Staff) through a one-year intensive TEL Fellowship program. In the program, leaders learn and apply concepts of creating “Beloved Communities” within their schools or organizations, which center around love, compassion, justice, and nonviolence.
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We hope to learn more about how empowering the leaders with the tools and community to support the co- creation of “Beloved Communities” impacts the well-being of the students they serve.
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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.
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.
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.
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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.