FemSMS: Pride Edition wins new grant for mental health support

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We are delighted to share that FemSMS: Pride Edition — our trauma-informed text-message service for LGBTQIA+ New Yorkers navigating migration, exile, or displacement — has been awarded a grant from Destination Tomorrow through the LGBTQI+ Social Determinants of Health Mini-Grant Program, extending the current pilot that NYC Pride, Heritage of Pride has helped launch through Pride Gives Back earlier this year.

This new grant will enable us to reach at least 200 LGBTQIA+ New Yorkers affected by migration, exile, or forced displacement — including Haitian and Caribbean communities newly joining the project — with compassionate, multilingual information on health, legal, housing, and gender-based violence support, addressing what research increasingly recognizes as a social determinant of health in its own right: the ability to find, understand, and act on trusted information at all.

For a population where 80% of LGBTQIA+ asylum seekers screen positive for clinically significant mental distress, and where shame so often stands between someone and the services New York already has, this grant means FemSMS can reach people safely, compassionately, and with dignity.

This work has never felt more urgent: immigrant, refugee, and exiled LGBTQIA+ New Yorkers — including Haitian and Caribbean communities newly navigating changes to Temporary Protected Status — carry compounding precarities that deepen by the day. Our own research labels this information poverty, and FemSMS is our chance to help someone feel safe enough to reach for the support they need. For us at Footage, to be trusted to continue our work in an ever more dangerous landscape for so many vulnerable people is something we don't take lightly, and our gratitude runs deep.

The Footage team are currently in New York conducting fieldwork and community outreach for FemSMS NYC, alongside meetings with partners and funders, and participation in events surrounding UNGA81. If you and/or your organization would like to explore becoming a FemSMS NYC partner or connecting with us while we are in New York, we’d love to hear from you.

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