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Black Minds Matter Fundraiser Tops £500,000. 'We Can't Quite Believe It'
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It was witnessing the huge mental health impact on Black British people of the coronavirus pandemic and police brutality in the US that made two friends from Bristol decide they had to do something to help.
Agnes Mwakatuma, 26, and Annie Nash, 29, launched the Black Minds Matter campaign on June 1, a week after the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota. Their aim was to raise money – and awareness – to provide 12-week-long rounds of therapy for some Black people in the UK struggling with their mental health.
Within three days, there was funding for 24 rounds. Within a week enough for 340. A month on, the pair have raised a staggering £500,000 – which will fund 12-weeks of therapy for 720 people. Mwakatuma and Nash say they “can’t quite believe” the number of people and organisations that have donated.
The need is certainly there – in the same period, they’ve been inundated with requests from more than 1,000 people hoping to access this support.
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“We put together Black Minds Matter UK after noticing the mental health of Black people around us deteriorate at an alarming rate,” Mwakatuma tells HuffPost UK.
“We noticed issues such as Covid-19 and the unjust killing of Black people in America were bringing out so many different emotions from built-up anger, sadness and unprocessed trauma patterns amongst the Black community.
“We wanted to enable as many Black people [as possible] in the UK to be able to access free mental health support in the form of therapy sessions.”
As crowd-funders multiplied in the wake of events in Minneapolis, the pair chatted about “how amazing it would be if someone started a fund” for the this cause,...
