Reflecting on 2025: A Year of Bold Leadership and Deepened Impact

HCN Staff at our annual Holiday Lunch

In 2025, HCN continued to show up where it matters most—at the intersection of homelessness, mental health, racial equity, and community empowerment. One of the most defining moments of the year was seeing our work recognized on national stages.

In 2025, Homeless Children’s Network was honored with the 2025 Advancing Minority Mental Health Award by the American Psychiatric Association Foundation—an acknowledgement of our long-standing commitment to culturally grounded, community-led mental health care for historically underserved communities. 

Our Ma’at Program was honored with the Toklas Torchbearer Award, affirming what our community has long practiced: culturally grounded, liberation-centered mental health care is essential. This recognition underscored the strength of Ma’at’s model, centered on healing, dignity, and self-determination for families navigating homelessness.

We were also awarded a grant from the Decolonizing Wealth Project’s Youth Mental Health Fund, a milestone that aligned deeply with our values. This support allowed us to further invest in youth mental health services that challenge extractive systems and instead resource communities to lead their own healing.

Our leadership’s voice reached far beyond San Francisco in 2025. Dr. Silas delivered a featured webinar at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, where she presented Homeless Children’s Network’s framework linking homelessness, historical displacement, and mental health. Centered on reflection, resistance, and repair, the presentation challenged public health leaders, researchers, and practitioners to examine how systems of care must reckon with history, power, and culture in order to be effective.

Throughout the year, we also expanded our  programmatic footprint to respond to urgent and evolving needs. We launched a groundbreaking Gender-Based Violence Program, breaking silences and barriers for survivors who too often fall through the cracks of traditional systems. We strengthened our substance use work through initiatives like Kupona, addressing substance use while uplifting LGBTQIA+ communities with care that is affirming, trauma-informed, and rooted in harm reduction. Our Jabali (SUD) Campaign continued to confront the opioid and fentanyl crisis head-on, centering young people as leaders and advocates in the fight for safer, healthier futures. This work reminded us that prevention, policy, and healing must move together.

We celebrated joy, too. The graduation of our 2025 Amani Cohort was a powerful reminder that healing is lived, embodied, and communal. Watching participants step forward with confidence, practical tools, and renewed self-trust marked one of the year’s most grounding moments.

As we move into 2026, we do so with clarity. The work ahead calls for scaling trust, deepening partnerships, and continuing to expand our understanding of what home can mean in a world shaped by inequity. We invite you to join us, visit www.hcnkids.org to learn more about our work. Email us at development@hcnkids.org to stay connected. Subscribe to our newsletter for monthly updates on the work we are doing. We can’t do it without you.