Healing Where It's Needed Most
For over 40 years, Care Through Touch Institute has provided free, trauma-informed massage in San Francisco, easing suffering, restoring dignity, and strengthening human connection.
We believe every person deserves to be seen, welcomed, and cared for, regardless of housing status, income, health, or circumstance.
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Our mission
To be present with human suffering and promote healing through human connection.
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Our vision
A world shaped by justice, kindness, and compassion, where stigma rooted in poverty, homelessness, racism, age, or gender is dismantled, and healing, dignity, and hope are accessible to all.
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Our values
We honor the inherent dignity and sacred worth of every human being. We believe in integrative, compassionate systems of care that uphold justice and equity.
Our story: rooted in compassion
Since 1983
In 1983, Mary Ann Finch, a massage therapist, theologian, and global health worker, set a blue crate on a Tenderloin sidewalk in San Francisco and began offering free massages to unhoused and isolated residents.
That simple act grew into Care Through Touch Institute, built on a powerful conviction: people experiencing the deepest effects of poverty, trauma, and isolation deserve safe, compassionate human contact.
Founded during the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis, CTI developed a model of care rooted in presence, dignity, and the belief that healing involves the whole person.
Over the decades, CTI's work has reached people experiencing homelessness, illness, chronic pain, trauma, and isolation. Today, practitioners bring free, clothed massage into trusted community settings across San Francisco, five days a week.
Our approach remains grounded in the same principle that inspired the first session: meet people where they are, and offer care without judgment.
Meet our founder
Mary Ann Finch
Mary Ann Finch founded Care Through Touch Institute after more than a decade working at the edges of healing and service. Trained as both a massage therapist and a theologian, she brought those two worlds together in a way that was deeply practical and profoundly human.
Her path to CTI included teaching spiritual formation at a Jesuit seminary, working in Mother Teresa's homes for the dying in Kolkata, and serving people in AIDS wards and cancer care programs in the Bay Area. She also worked with street youth, women in recovery, incarcerated people, and elders.
At the heart of her work is a conviction she has held for decades: touch can affirm dignity, and the people most shut out of mainstream care are often those who need compassionate connection most.
Mary Ann's founding vision continues to shape CTI's work today.
Caring in the margins
The story behind the work
Caring in the Margins tells the story of CTI's journey, from a small interfaith nonprofit in the 1980s to a trusted community partner embedded in San Francisco's underserved neighborhoods.
Through stories and photographs, the book reflects CTI's mission to bring healing touch to people pushed to the margins of society and affirm dignity where it is too often denied.
The book is available directly through CTI:
$25 for one copy
$45 for two copies
$60 for three copies
$75 for four copies, with one additional copy free
Proceeds support CTI's ongoing mission to provide free, trauma-informed care.
Be part of the story
CTI's work continues through the practitioners, community partners, and supporters who believe in the power of compassionate presence.