Community is one of Stella Nova’s five core values. We strive to show up in community with each other, with the communities we serve, and especially with members of marginalized communities, whose health and well-being are most vulnerable.
As a team, one of the ways we’ve enacted that value together has been our annual Month of Giving project. Since 2020, we’ve chosen grassroots, mostly local organizations doing valuable work in our communities. Over the course of the month, we would donate a portion of our session fees to support groups like the Asian Women’s Shelter, the East Oakland Collective, La Casa De Las Madres, and the National Network of Abortion Funds.
This year, our annual Month of Giving is evolving into the Stella Nova Community Cares project.
Instead of donating $5 per session over the course of a month, we’ll now be contributing $1 from every session over the course of the full year. This shift to smaller, more regular donations will allow us to donate a larger total amount — making a bigger impact in a way that’s also more sustainable for a small business like ours.
For the September 2023-August 2024 year, our group has chosen to support Lyon-Martin Community Health, a community clinic in San Francisco’s Mission District.
Lyon-Martin provides medical and mental health care—regardless of insurance or ability to pay—with a focus on serving the queer and trans communities, as well as cisgender women. They offer so many necessary services, from gender affirming abortion care, to COVID vaccination and treatment, to street outreach and harm reduction drop-in hours. (Seriously, check out their website! They’re doing really awesome work.)
According to their Instagram, 2/3 of Lyon-Martin’s clients identify as transgender, intersex, or gender nonconforming (TGI). As these communities face an onslaught of attacks on their dignity and well-being—not to mention their access to basic, lifesaving healthcare—we’re enthusiastic about offering support to an organization offering high quality, affirming care through an anti-oppressive lens.
If you’re a Stella Nova client, you can feel good about knowing that you’re helping us support a worthy organization, led and operated by members of the community it serves. And if you’d like to do more, you can join us by making your own one-time or monthly donation here.
About the Author
Dr. Maya Borgueta is the founder of Stella Nova Psychology, a private therapy clinic located in San Francisco, California that serves women, nonbinary folks, and people of all genders seeking a feminist space to heal.
Maya specializes in supporting the mental health needs of women of color, adult children of immigrants, and members of the LGBTQ+ community. She has a special interest in supporting individuals dealing with toxic work environments and workplace trauma.
