Rooted in Compassion
Since 1983
From humble beginnings to four decades of compassionate care.
Our Story
In 1983, Mary Ann Finch, a massage therapist, theologian, and global health worker, set a blue crate on a Tenderloin sidewalk, San Francisco's most distressed neighborhood, and began offering free massages to unhoused and isolated residents. With that simple act, she posed a question that would change thousands of lives: What would happen if we brought healing touch to the people the city had left behind?
Founded in 1983 during the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis, Care Through Touch Institute (CTI) grew from that moment and has spent 40 years operating on a radical premise: for people experiencing the deepest traumas of poverty and homelessness, safe, consensual touch is a vital entry point to mental health.
From its inception to today, CTI has been continuously shaping a model rooted in dignity, compassion, and trauma-informed care. Now a long-standing mental health innovator, CTI serves San Francisco's most marginalized communities five days a week across ten locations. Our "no-barrier" model, requiring no ID, insurance, sobriety, or appointment, meets people where they are, offering 15 to 30 minute clothed massage sessions that help regulate the nervous system, reduce anxiety, and rebuild trust. This moment of grounding is more than comfort; it is a dignifying mental health intervention that restores connection and opens the door to medical care, emotional stability, and housing pathways.
Meet Our Founder
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 had no name yet.
Her path to CTI ran through a Jesuit seminary where she taught spiritual formation, through Mother Teresa's homes for the dying in Kolkata, through AIDS wards and cancer care programs in the Bay Area during years when few wanted to get close to the people inside them. She worked with street youth, women in recovery, incarcerated people, and elders long before trauma-informed care became standard vocabulary.
What she built at CTI was grounded in a conviction she has held for decades: that touch is a form of dignity, and that the people most shut out of mainstream care are the ones who need it most.
She continues to lead CTI today, still teaching, still practicing, still deepening the work she started over 40 years ago.
Our Book
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 most underserved neighborhoods.
Through stories and photographs, the book captures CTI’s mission: to bring healing touch to those pushed to the edges of society and to affirm dignity where it is most often denied.
Caring in the Margins is available directly through CTI:
$25 – 1 copy
$45 – 2 copies
$60 – 3 copies
$75 – 4 copies (3 + 1 free)
Proceeds support CTI’s ongoing mission to provide free trauma-informed care.