IDHA End-of-Year Celebration & Fundraiser

Sunday, December 7, 2025
3-6:30 pm ET

Transbox with Rounded Edges

Join IDHA on Sunday, December 7, 2025 for a virtual gathering to honor the practices and relationships that help us show up for one another through cycles of struggle, grief, and transformation.

Mutual aid – people sharing resources to meet immediate needs while building lasting change – reminds us that connection and shared commitment are what enable communities and movements to thrive. This is the heart of transformative mental health: healing ourselves and caring for each other as we work to transform the world around us.

This dynamic event will feature a keynote by organizer and writer Dean Spade, an interactive workshop, artistic performances, and more. It will be a space to slow down, replenish, and root into the foundations of sustainable change – to tend the spark of collective care and celebrate the wisdom and everyday practices that sustain liberation.

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Schedule at-a-glance

3:00-3:10 pm ET	Opening Remarks	Jessie Roth
3:10-3:20 pm ET	Embodied Centering Practice	Eliana Rubin
3:20-4:15 pm ET	Panel: Collective Care in Times of Uncertainty	Panelists:Yolo Akili Robinson, Mara Martinez-Hewitt, Eliana Rubin Moderator: Noah Gokul
4:20-5:05 pm ET	Workshop: Transformative Mutual Aid Practices	Sascha DuBrul
5:05-5:25 pm ET	Artist Showcase	Stephanie Heit, Chanika Svetvilas
5:30-6:05 pm ET	Keynote Speech	Dean Spade
6:05-6:15 pm ET	Radical Gratitude & Giving Circle	Antonia Barba, Phil Yanos, Jay Stevens
6:15-6:30 pm ET	Raffle Winner Reveals and Closing Remarks	Denise Ranaghan

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Pricing

As IDHA celebrates 9 cycles around the sun, more than ever we need to become self-sustaining. Your support gives us the freedom to produce the transformative programming that we’re known for. Whether it’s Decarcerating Care, member-led events, or classes you can’t find anywhere else, IDHA wants to continue to share knowledge and foster community to help guide us into a more liberated future. All funds we raise will go directly to strengthening communities of practice rooted in rights-based, peer-centered, and holistic mental health.

Save 15% when you purchase by Friday, November 21 — discount applies to all tiers except General Admission.

Don’t see a ticket price that works for you? Email us at contact@idha-nyc.org.

What you get:	General Admission $20	Community Sponsor $65	dialogic dreamer $200	Creative changemaker $300
Live event entry, recording, and resource list	✓	✓	✓	✓
Raffle entries	1	2	5	10
IDHA self-paced courses of your choosing	-	1	3	5
IDHA Core Curriculum enrollment (CE credits included, starting at $399 value)	-	-	-	✓

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Detailed Schedule

3:00-3:10 pm ET

Opening Remarks

IDHA’s Director, Jessie Roth, will open the event with reflections on the role of collective care in sustaining movements and in shaping IDHA’s work. She will also share important information regarding tech and accessibility, community agreements, resource sharing, and follow up for the event.

Jessie Roth

Jessie is IDHA's Director. She is a writer and activist organizing at the intersection of mental health and social justice. A longtime organizer with IDHA, she has supported the development of initiatives such as Mental Health Trialogue, a forum bridging peers, family members, and providers. Inspired by her family’s experiences with the mental health system, Jessie’s work is focused on the healing power of storytelling and the importance of cross-movement organizing for mental health liberation. Her writing has been published in the book We've Been Too Patient: An Anthology of Voices from Radical Mental Health, the Intima Journal of Narrative Medicine, and the Village Voice. Read Full Bio

3:10-3:20 pm ET

Embodied Centering Practice

We'll begin with an embodied centering practice, rooting into our lineages of collective care to fortify ourselves for the work ahead.

Eliana Rubin

Eliana is a politicized somatics teacher, anti-Zionist organizer, land steward, and queer pleasure instigator. She runs an embodied facilitation practice with Sanctuary Embodied aimed at resourcing organizers and trauma survivors to build collective power. She also published a book with PM Press in 2024, Taking the State Out of the Body: A Guide to Embodied Resistance to Zionism. She was born and raised by the dramatic landscapes and freaks of the San Francisco Bay Area, and is now rooted in the southern movement history and red clay of Durham, North Carolina. Read Full Bio

3:20-4:15 pm ET

Panel: Collective Care in Times of Uncertainty

Collective care – the practice of tending to ourselves and each other, our wider communities, and the earth – is at the heart of lasting social change. In contrast to dominant models of mental health that emphasize individual well-being, collective care centers interdependence. By caring collectively, we build the trust, relationships, and capacity that allow movements to endure, respond to conflict and harm with compassion, and imagine new ways of living and working together.

This featured panel brings together organizers, healers, and community practitioners to share how they are practicing collective care amid ongoing social and political upheaval. Together, we’ll explore how practices like peer support and mutual aid can help us meet this moment with steadiness and creativity, and how our relationships can be sources of collective strength and renewal. Through stories and reflections, panelists will offer diverse perspectives on what it takes to build relationships and communities rooted in connection, persistence, and hope.

Yolo Akili Robinson

Yolo (he/they) is a non-binary, award-winning writer, healing justice practitioner, yogi, and the founder and Executive Director of the Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective (BEAM). A visionary in the field of mental health, Yolo leads BEAM—an innovative.... 501(c)(3) national nonprofit organization that funds, resources, holds healing spaces, and trains a network of Black therapists, wellness practitioners, and mental health organizations to provide culturally rooted wellness care to our most exploited and under-resourced communities. Through this work, BEAM builds a robust and sustainable ecosystem of care that challenges the structural barriers to emotional and mental well-being for communities across the U.S. BEAM’s work has received support from esteemed institutions such as the Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, as well as prominent cultural figures including Jordan Peele, Kelly Rowland, Chloe x Halle, and Debbie Allen. Yolo resides in Los Angeles, California, continuing to reimagine wellness through a Black liberation lens. Read Full Bio

Mara Martinez-Hewitt

Mara (they/them) is a queer imaginatrix, therapist and community organizer born and raised by the mangroves in Miami. They focus on healing justice for survivors, decolonizing, popular education, pleasure activism, land rematriation, DIY mental health... and mutual aid efforts beyond borders. Mara's current projects include facilitating Transformative Justice as a worker-owner at Spring Up Cooperative, supporting psychedelic rematriation at POCPC & facilitating peer support groups at SWOPLA. Mara celebrates diasporic dance music on their dublab radio show, Discoteca 3ala Mars. Mara believes that embodied and restorative practices guide people towards unlocking their own power, fueling collective dreaming, and pushing us towards freedom. They currently live on Tongva land in East Los Angeles. Read Full Bio

Eliana Rubin

Eliana is a politicized somatics teacher, anti-Zionist organizer, land steward, and queer pleasure instigator. She runs an embodied facilitation practice with Sanctuary Embodied aimed at resourcing organizers and trauma survivors to build collective power. She also published a book with PM Press in 2024, Taking the State Out of the Body: A Guide to Embodied Resistance to Zionism. She was born and raised by the dramatic landscapes and freaks of the San Francisco Bay Area, and is now rooted in the southern movement history and red clay of Durham, North Carolina. Read Full Bio

Noah Gokul (Moderator)

Noah (they/she) is IDHA's Program Manager. Noah is a Queer multidisciplinary artist and educator here to create liberated worlds through art, storytelling, and sound. They grew up in Oakland, CA/unceded Ohlone land, and identify as a trauma survivor... with sensitivities to the world around them. They use music and art for meaning-making and the healing of others, integrating these passions into their work as a peer for young adults in a first-episode psychosis program. They have facilitated in a wide variety of settings, at the intersections of anti-oppression, trauma, incarceration, Caribbean ancestry, music, and mental health. Through their incantations they create spaces of radical imagination and possibility. Read Full Bio

4:15-4:20 pm ET

Break

4:20-5:05 pm ET

Workshop: Transformative Mutual Aid Practices

Transformative Mutual Aid Practices (T-MAPs) are simple yet powerful tools for navigating change, clarifying what matters most, and strengthening connection with the people in our lives. For more than a decade, individuals and communities around the world have used T-MAPs to bridge personal and collective transformation – cultivating grounded, relational, and liberatory approaches to care.

In this interactive mini-workshop, Sascha DuBrul, co-creator of T-MAPs, will introduce the foundations of this practice and guide participants through a series of prompts to begin creating their own “maps” of values, needs, supports, and resilience practices. Come ready to reflect, connect, and deepen skills that can help us stay grounded, connected, and resilient in these wild and uncertain times.

Sascha Altman DuBrul

Sascha is a writer, facilitator, and co-founder of The Icarus Project, a pioneering mutual aid network that reframed madness and mental illness as part of human diversity. His work bridges personal and collective transformation, integrating storytelling, systems thinking... and Internal Family Systems (IFS). A longtime collaborator with the Institute for the Development of Human Arts (IDHA), Sascha teaches about the intersections of mental health, social change, and meaning-making in an age of technological upheaval. Through his current project, Underground Transmissions, he explores how AI, narrative, and community care shape the future of consciousness. He lives in California with his family and continues to build bridges between radical mental health movements and emerging forms of collective care. https://www.saschadubrul.com/ Read Full Bio

5:05-5:25 pm ET

Artist Showcase

To honor the role of creativity in our movements, two IDHA members will share work exploring the lived textures of mental health difference, lineage, memory, and care. Their art invites us to dwell more deeply with the realities we carry, to imagine otherwise, and to feel into the worlds we are building together.

Stephanie Heit

Stephanie (she/her) is a queer disabled poet, dancer, teacher, and codirector of Turtle Disco, a somatic writing space on Anishinaabe territory where she is a white settler in Ypsilanti, Michigan. She is bipolar, a mad activist, a shock/psych system survivor... and a member of the Olimpias, an international disability performance collective. Her practices explore the seams of movement, language, and mental health difference often within site-specific inquiries involving water. Her most recent collection is the award-winning book of hybrid memoir poems PSYCH MURDERS (Wayne State University Press), which invites readers inside psychiatric wards and shock treatments toward new futures of care. Read Full Bio

Chanika Svetvilas

Chanika is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural worker based in Princeton Junction, New Jersey, whose practice focuses on mental health difference and the diversity of its lived experience including the stigma encountered and its intersection with Mad Pride... and disability justice. This work is an extension of her interest to utilize personal narrative as a way to share experiences, to disrupt stereotypes, to reflect on contemporary issues and intersectionality, and cultivate safe spaces through installation, sculpture, mixed-media, film, and performative actions and ultimately to make the invisible visible. She had her museum solo show. Resounding Remnants at the Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton, NJ. She has presented her work at the College Art Association Conference, the Society for Disability Studies Annual Conference, and the Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Conference. She has exhibited nationally and presented her experimental films internationally. “Silent Screaming Siren” received the Golden Elephant Award for experimental film at the Bangkok Movie Awards (2025) Her work has been published in Disability Studies Quarterly, Wordgathering, and Rogue Agent. Svetvilas was the co-founder of ThaiLinks, a collective that was based in New York City and promoted awareness about issues affecting the Thai American community. Svetvilas was born in Buffalo, NY to Thai immigrant parents. She earned her BS from Skidmore College and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College. She has exhibited nationally including the Denver International Airport, the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning (Queens, NY), the Brooklyn Public Library, the Asian Arts Initiative (Philadelphia), and Artworks (Trenton) among others. Read Full Bio

5:25-5:30 pm ET

Break

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5:30-6:05 pm ET

Keynote Speech

Dean Spade

Dean Spade has been working in movements for queer and trans liberation, anti-militarism, and police and prison abolition for the past 25 years. He’s the author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law, and Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)... and the director of the documentary “Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back!.” His new book is Love in a Fucked Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up and Raise Hell Together, and he is the host of a new podcast with the same name. Read Full Bio

6:05-6:15 pm ET

Radical Gratitude & Giving Circle

Jay Stevens, IDHA's Board Treasurer, will open this segment with an expression of radical gratitude for all of the support we’ve received from our community to date, both in the context of this year’s fundraiser and beyond. We’ll convey the impact of your support, explaining exactly where the money we are raising goes and why grassroots support means so much to IDHA.

We’ll also be joined by two members and ambassadors for IDHA’s Equalizing Access Giving Circle, who will share some of why they support IDHA through the Giving Circle, and how you can lean into our collective values in order to support the learning and leadership of those most impacted by becoming a member.

Antonia Barba

Antonia (she/her) is a licensed clinical social worker who has been working in the field of trauma focused mental health support for over 20 years. She founded Inform Transform, where she provides training and consultation for mental health and social service... providers and organizations focused on trauma-informed practice with LGBTQ+ youth and their families, traumatic loss and crisis response, peer support, and navigating stress and moral distress among helping professionals. Antonia is passionate about transforming the way we think about and provide mental health services, and grateful to be engaged in work that honors and centers the lived experiences of youth, families and communities. She works closely with the Family Acceptance Project® where she trains on their family support model to prevent health risks, strengthen families and build healthy futures for LGBTQ+ and gender diverse youth; and is a co-chair of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network’s Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression Collaborative Group where she helps develop culturally grounded tools and resources to promote trauma prevention, healing and recovery for LGBTQ+ youth and their families. She is an avid reader, devoted cat mom, and lifelong musical theater lover who occasionally dabbles as a children’s performing arts educator. Read Full Bio

Philip Yanos

Philip is professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the Graduate Center, City University of New York and Director of Clinical Training for the Ph.D. program in Clinical Psychology at John Jay College. He is the author of... "Exiles in New York City: Warehousing the Marginalized on Ward's Island" (2025) and Written Off: Mental Health Stigma and the Loss of Human Potential (2018). Read Full Bio

Jay Stevens

Jay (LMHC, MBA, Acupuncture Detoxification Specialist) brings a unique combination of business and social services experience to IDHA. After years in finance and struggles with substance use (and a subsequent incarceration) opened his eyes to the systemic harms... caused by structural racism, classism, patriarchy, and white supremacy, Jay decided to dedicate his life to help transform unjust systems while supporting those harmed by them. Jay now serves as an Assistant Vice President of Outreach at Breaking Ground – bringing a Harm Reduction and Decarceration lens to the work of supporting those who are unhoused. He believes in the foundational power of human connection, and in IDHA’s mission to create a new transformative mental health system - led by people with lived experience - that is community-based and free from surveillance and coercion. Read Full Bio

6:15-6:30 pm ET

Raffle Winner Reveals and Closing Remarks

Denise Ranaghan

Denise Ranaghan shares a powerful personal story of recovery that has driven her 20-year record of service in the mental health field. She has held multiple positions including Residential Manager, Peer Specialist, Director of Wellness Services, Director of Assertive Community Treatment, and Director of Peer Services. In all of her positions she strove to include the peer perspective and vehemently called out oppressive practices, and eventually came to terms with how she was contributing to them. She was one of the first in several agencies who publicly identified as a Peer while in professional roles. She introduced and supported alternative peer run self help groups that challenged the “clinician knows best” belief. Denise has presented on Peer Support, Trauma-Informed Care, Voice hearing, Cultural Diversity, Suicide and The Human Canine connection. She is the author of multiple essays on recovery as well as the book Institutional Eyes which profiles her experience in the military where she was first psychiatrically hospitalized. Presently she has a private practice in Woodstock, NY, she serves on the Ulster County Community Services Board, the Mental health subcommittee and is a member a local Social Justice Committee. She says she has found community with a purpose at IDHA! Read Full Bio

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Raffle

We are giving away a special grand raffle prize at the end of the event, in addition to free transformative mental health themed books and IDHA swag throughout the evening.

Below are the books that will be included in the giveaway. Check back as we get closer to the event because we may add more!

Raffle tickets are included in every every paid ticket tier. Additional tickets are $5 each, and can be purchased via IDHA's donation form (please include “raffle” in the donor note).

**LOVE IN A F*CKED-UP WORLD**

by Dean Spade

This book is a resounding call to action and a practical manifesto for how to combat cultural scripts and take our relationships into our own hands, preparing us for the work of changing the world. Learn more →

EMBODIED ACTIVISM

by Rae Johnson

This book helps us explore and transform the political realities of our everyday lives in a new way: by harnessing the felt experience of our bodies as the sites of our activism. Learn more →

Taking the State out of the Body

by Eliana Rubin

This book invites readers of all backgrounds to build an embodied sense of safety that has the power to make militarized borders, policing, and nation-states obsolete. Learn more →

What it Takes to Heal

by Prentis Hemphill

This book offers a framework for the way forward, showing how to heal our bodies, minds, and souls—to develop the interpersonal skills necessary to break down the doors of disconnection and take risks to reshape our world toward justice. Learn more →

MAD STUDIES READER

edited by Bradley Lewis, Alisha Ali, and Jazmine Russell

This book draws on the perspectives, voices, and experiences of artists, mad pride activists, humanities and social science scholars, and critical clinicians to explore the complexity of mental life and mental difference. Learn more →

Frequently Asked Questions

Will the event be recorded?

Yes! The entire event will be recorded and shared with registrants after the event. The event recordings will anonymize participants (removing faces and names). Closed caption transcripts will be provided alongside the recordings.

How is IDHA approaching accessibility for this event?

ASL interpretation will be provided for the duration of the event. IDHA also plans to use Zoom’s automated captions. Please email us at contact@idha-nyc.org with any other access-related questions or requests.

I can't make it to the event live. Can I still buy a ticket? How else can I support IDHA?

If you can’t join live but want to catch up with the recordings later, we recommend still buying a ticket! If you want to support IDHA outside of this event, you can make a one-time donation, or become a monthly supporter by joining our Equalizing Access Giving Circle.

Is my ticket purchase tax deductible?

A portion of every ticket is tax deductible, excluding the amount for any goods or services included in the ticket cost (e.g. self-paced courses). The tax deductible portion of your ticket purchase will show on your gift receipt.

I can't afford to purchase a ticket. Can I still join?

If you don’t see a ticket price that works for you, please email us at contact@idha-nyc.org! We’d love to have you join, and no one will be turned away due to a lack of funds.

How can I learn more about the self-paced courses and Core Curriculum that are included in some of the ticket tiers?

IDHA’s Self-Paced Course Library is home to 17 offerings, covering a range of transformative mental health topics. We invite you to browse the library to learn more about what is available! The Transformative Mental Health Core Curriculum is our foundational offering, and consists of more than 22 hours of original video content, supplemental readings, a journaling workbook, glossary, and more. Please email core-curriculum@idha-nyc.org with any questions.

Special Navigation

IDHA End-of-Year Celebration & Fundraiser

Sunday, December 7, 20253-6:30 pm ET

REGISTER

Schedule at-a-glance

REGISTER

Pricing

What you get:

REGISTER

Detailed Schedule

3:00-3:10 pm ET

Opening Remarks

3:10-3:20 pm ET

Embodied Centering Practice

3:20-4:15 pm ET

Panel: Collective Care in Times of Uncertainty

4:15-4:20 pm ET

Break

4:20-5:05 pm ET

Workshop: Transformative Mutual Aid Practices

5:05-5:25 pm ET

Artist Showcase

5:25-5:30 pm ET

Break

REGISTER

5:30-6:05 pm ET

Keynote Speech

6:05-6:15 pm ET

Radical Gratitude & Giving Circle

6:15-6:30 pm ET

Raffle Winner Reveals and Closing Remarks

REGISTER

Raffle

LOVE IN A F*CKED-UP WORLD

EMBODIED ACTIVISM

Taking the State out of the Body

What it Takes to Heal

MAD STUDIES READER

Frequently Asked Questions

Navigation:

Detailed schedule:

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Sunday, December 7, 2025
3-6:30 pm ET

**LOVE IN A F*CKED-UP WORLD**