Episode 5: Community Forward SF

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Community Forward front line workers and clients

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“Housing is Healthcare”

In this episode we feature the voice of Sammie Rayner, Chief Programming Officer with Community Forward SF. Over the past 40 plus years Community Forward SF has been helping our unhoused community members to move off the street, find comprehensive services and stabilize their lives. Community Forward SF serves over 6,000 unhoused community members annually. Some of the most vulnerable community members are cis-gendered and trans women. Community Forward SF is the leading agency addressing the unique needs of these fellow community members. As part of providing comprehensive services Community Forward SF provides housing, a sobering center, and medical services.

Sammie Rayner

Sammie Rayner is an entrepreneur and philanthropist focused on poverty alleviation. She currently serves as Chief Program Officer of Community Forward SF, a network of homeless service programs serving the most vulnerable San Franciscans with trauma-informed care. Before joining Community Forward SF, Sammie co-founded and and served as COO at HandUp, a fundraising platform for human service nonprofits in the U.S. Sammie’s initial passion for designing programs to alleviate poverty started in West Africa where she co-founded and served as Executive Director for Lumana, a micro-finance organization in Ghana. Sammie is passionate about using human-centered design, data, and compassion to tackle poverty. She frequently speaks at social good and human service events such as SOCAP, Stanford’s Social Media on Purpose conference, and more.

Community Forward SF

We envision a San Francisco where every life counts. Everyone who has lost the ability to care for themselves will be given the support they need to gain control of their own lives. There will be no homelessness on the street, those with illness and addiction will be cared for, and everyone will be supported along a path toward permanent housing and self-sufficiency.

Community Forward SF is a collection of vital programs that ensures our neighbors experiencing homelessness have effective services designed for their unique needs. Whether one needs housing, medical shelter, a safe place to become sober, or calm in the face of domestic violence - we care for those most vulnerable in our community. We are not just one program. We are a network of programs designed to work together to meet every stage of need. We focus on the hardest to reach, most vulnerable people: Women & Trans Women, Medical Cris, Substance Use Disorder, Older Adults and provide these essential services: Emergency, Medical & Transitional Shelter Supportive Housing Wrap-Around Services.

Our programs meet the needs of people, rather than demanding that people meet the needs of our programs https://communityforwardsf.org/whoweare

Donation / Volunteer

As part of Community Forward SF’s response to providing support for unhoused community members to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, Sammie mentioned their Funding Campaign to support their staff who are working on the frontlines to provide essential services. The Support Our Team Fund will help Community Forward SF’s staff to continue to provide essential services for their shelter residents. With COVID-19 the staff now does temperature screenings, maintains higher sanitation standards and implements social distancing measures in Community Forward SF’s shelters. To find out more about the program please visit https://handup.org/campaigns/covid You can also get involved with Community Forward SF by becoming a volunteer

Videos

To watch the interview of Sammie for BAVC’s SF Commons TV Show SF Nonprofit Spotlight check out this video:

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“I think now is a time when the public is recognizing that homeless services, are public health services, housing is healthcare, right? You can’t be safe from a pandemic if you don’t have somewhere to stay. ”

— Sammie Rayner, Chief Program Officer of Community Forward SF

Our Sponsorship

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