Help Third Root Stay Open and Heal!

* HELP US KEEP OUR DOORS OPEN *

...And put your money where your healing is!

You know us as the place to come to when you you have pain and illness, or seek healing and connection through acupuncture, herbal medicine, massage, and yoga. Today we need your help to keep our door open and work toward a sustainable future.

Do you remember the first time you came to us? What it felt like to be  able to receive what we offer on an accessible sliding scale and be welcomed in the entirety of who you are?

For the past ten years our collectively-run holistic healthcare center in Brooklyn has cared for thousands of people with a special welcome to people of color communities, LGBTIQ people, people with disabilities, survivors, and all who have limited access to holistic healthcare. In the beginning Third Root was a labor of love with collective members donating time, energy, and resources. Even years into the work some collective members were earning as little as $5 an hour. Today we earn $17 an hour. But while we've grown and done important work over time our history, work practices, and structure have created circumstances that have resulted in inequity for many of us, particularly compounded for those of us who are Black and POC, as well as an immediate financial crisis (partially related to low staffing and high turnover in response to low wages, etc.) It also means that our intention to center POC, and especially people of African descent and those from immigrant communities has fallen short of our mission, internally and externally.

This is all happening in the moment of this current political landscape in which state pressure is mounting against many communities while resources diminish.

Some of the ways we're already responding to these issues / needs:

* Raised the cost of individual yoga classes for the first time in years, while increasing the number of classes that are by donation and "no one turned away for lack of funds."

* Increased wages for all workers

* Beginning work with a facilitator to help us become more secure

What we still need to do:

* Refine or create a new operating structure that provides a consistent fair wage for all and helps us fully realize our mission to create access

* Address and reconcile issues of oppression internally

* Rededicate to creating more access for POC communities

* Build the resources to support more leadership so we can thrive in the future

We need your help! Think of the healing support you've gotten at Third Root. Can you offer us the value of a private one-hour healing session at your rate on the sliding scale? Or the value of a community acupuncture session at your rate, or perhaps a yoga class? Think of it as a 10th Anniversary gift and investment in your healing, ours, and that of our shared communities.

Your donation will:
* allow us to support payroll after a very lean season,
* support general operations,
* and fund work with a facilitator who can help the collective move toward a place of restructuring into a more stable and just business model

We really need your help to get us over this significant hump. Once we're past it we see a more solid future ahead, but only community uplift will get us all there together!

Thanks for all you already do, and thanks in advance for your support toward our mutual survival and healing*

 ~ The Third Root Collective