Sponsorships

A Letter from the Executive Director

Hello Friends,

I am cordially inviting you to sponsor and attend the fourth annual Rite of Joy Conference. We are thrilled to host the only Black/African American–centric peer-run mental wellness and arts conference in the nation. We need your help to make it happen!

The Black/African American community is in a mental health crisis. According to SAMHSA’s 2018 survey on Mental Health:

• Sixteen percent (4.8 million) of Black and African American people reported having a mental illness, and 22.4 percent of those (1.1 million people) reported a serious mental illness over the past year.
• Serious mental illness (SMI) rose among all ages of Black and African American people between 2008 and 2018.
• Despite rates being lower than the overall U.S. population, major depressive episodes increased from 9 percent-10.3 percent in Black youth ages 12-17, 6.1 percent to 9.4% in young adults 18-25, and 5.7% to 6.3% in the 26-49 age range between 2015 and 2018.

Some factors that perpetuate these issues are:

• Lack of culturally competent providers from diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds
• Stigma associated with mental illness
• Distrust of the healthcare system

In the words of civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, “Nobody’s free, till everybody’s free.” Although Rite of Joy’s focus is serving Blacks, learning how to address this crisis in an impactful way is a mandate for everyone.

The long-term goal of this conference is sustainable systemic change, creating culturally competent care and providers who understand multiple modalities of wellness for our communities. However, we cannot reach this goal without you. Sponsoring this conference is one easy step your organization can take to help decrease disparities in access to mental health care for the Black Community.

Sincerely,

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