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The CAMFT Educational Foundation was formed to support and enhance the profession of marriage and family therapy. The Educational Foundation fulfills this mission by providing scholarships, grants, and other assistance to persons pursuing the profession or conducting research relevant to the practice of marriage and family therapists, and also by engaging in other programs to enhance and expand awareness of the profession.
One of the hallmarks of a life well lived is giving back to make it better than you found it. With generosity, a plot of land becomes a community garden; a dilapidated building becomes a food bank; and a mental health profession becomes more robust and diverse.
Since 1977, the CAMFT Educational Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization, has awarded nearly $150,000 in scholarships and grants. Today, the need to create a more diverse mental health workforce has never been greater, and scholarships and grants help make the dream of licensure as a marriage and family therapist a reality for many.
There Are Several Ways You Can Make A Difference To the Educational Foundation:
Monetary gift: Donations by check or credit card are critically important to the CAMFT Educational Foundation, because they can immediately fund scholarships and grants.
Bequests to the Foundation are easy to arrange. Additionally, your bequest may be designated for a particular purpose; used to establish a new scholarship; or, given to honor you or a loved one. Learn more.
Your gift to the CAMFT Educational Foundation will allow your generosity to leave the MFT profession better than you found it!
Apply for an Educational Foundation Scholarship or Grant
Please consider making a contribution to allow the Educational Foundation to continue its legacy of awarding scholarships and grants to the next generation of marriage and family therapists! All contributions are 100% tax deductible.
Clinton E. Phillips Scholarship RecipientKendy Faye(Read more)
Kendy is a passionate advocate for reproductive mental health, dedicated feminist scholar, and proud Mother of one. She is currently in her final year as a Master’s student in Clinical Psychology while pursuing advanced certification in perinatal mental health through Maternal Mental Health Now, and serving as an MFT Trainee at the Transgender Health and Wellness Center. Her orientation as a therapist is shaped by a 15-year career supporting families as an international educator and counselor throughout Costa Rica, Ecuador, Turkey Spain, and East Africa. In Kenya, Kendy served as a lead education consultant in country schools through an international NGO and co-founded and managed Tanzania’s first full-service, alternative learning center for local and international students. Kendy’s transition into the field of mental healthcare came after surviving a traumatic birth and finding healing through therapy and receiving training as a birth and postpartum doula through Mama Glow. As both a survivor of and witness to birth trauma, Kendy is committed to promoting trauma prevention and recovery through her community Mind-Body maternal wellness classes and collaborating with local stakeholders to create awareness about the value of maternal mental health. The funds from this award will help support her ongoing role as a full-time primary caregiver and graduate student in addition to her most recent initiative: a research project she is honored to be co-authoring on birth trauma under the supervision of Jaz Robbins, Psy.D. BCHN® at Pepperdine University, where they have been afforded a number of guest lecture opportunities to provide education and insight on this important topic to graduate students. Kendy regards maternal mental health as the cornerstone of societal health and wellness. She looks forward to continued growth in developing a holistic, multicultural, and liberation-focused practice dedicated to protecting perinatal mental health and wellness worldwide.
What Winning the Clinton E. Phillips Scholarship Means to Me
Ronald D. Lunceford Scholarship Recipient Amber Lea Greene (Read more)
As a fifteen-year-old, Amber suddenly lost her mother and was thrust into the foster care system, struggling to make sense of her world and identity. Growing up as a mulatta she had never known where she fit in the world. She is currently working in community mental health providing art and somatic-influenced psychodynamic therapy in a school-based setting with children from traditionally underserved demographics in her community. In addition to being an MFT trainee working full-time for a local non-profit, Amber is also a single mother and an active member of the local community fulfilling several ongoing volunteer roles year-round. Throughout her career, elevating the most vulnerable populations in our community has been her passion. She has worked with a variety of individuals from diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds as well as individuals with physical and intellectual disabilities, children and adults over 65 years of age. Amber has focused on populations impacted by trauma and is currently pursuing her education with a concentration in somatics believing it to be an effective modality in trauma-focused intervention and treatment. She would like to build a private practice specializing in trauma treatment through expressive arts, movement and connection-focused holistic treatment. Amber would also like to focus her services on children and adults who experience non-suicidal self-injury and those who self-identify as African-American or Bi-racial.
What it Means to be a Scholarship Winner
Educational Foundation Scholarship RecipientMara Martinez-Hewitt(Read more)
Mara is a queer artist of color, art/land therapist and imaginatrix who dreams of opening a transformative justice & liberation community center, including sliding scale group therapy and art(-ivism) therapy, transforming large-scale agency work via grassroots healing practices. This vision is a prayer they recognize comes directly from their ancestors. When it came time to apply to practicum, Mara focused on sites that align with their values of harm reduction, peer support and mutual aid, finding alignment at the Gender Health Center (GHC) in Sacramento. There, they are completing clinical training hours and gaining clinical skills on how to create their own practice as a healing justice center. As a future LMFT, Mara plans to create an environment where clients feel comfortable sharing where they truly are on their mental health scale and can be honest about violence or fear of violence occurring in the household, because they know clinicians will hold their story with the weight it deserves. As a community organizer and scholar, this scholarship will ensure that they are provided for as they continue to provide care work for folks who lack access to healing spaces and movement workers.
What it means to receive a CAMFT Educational Foundation Scholarship
Educational Foundation Grant RecipientKathleen Sarmiento(Read more)
What it Means to be a Grant Winner
Educational Foundation Scholarship Honorable Mention:Andrea Duffy(Read more)
Andrea Duffy is an MFT trainee at a small school district in the bay area. She has two years of work as a registered behavior technician (RBT) with children and young adults with autism and another two years as a behavioral teaching aide and group home aide with at-risk youth ages five to twenty-two. Andrea will graduate from the University of San Francisco in May of this year with an MA in Counseling Psychology and continue on to her associateship. She looks forward to utilizing her skills through a social justice lens to understand the systemic, cultural, and environmental effects on her clients and create a more compassionate and nonjudgmental working relationship.
Educational Foundation Grant Honorable Mention:Ushta Cawasji(Read more)
Ushta Cawasji is a student at Santa Clara University whose areas of research interest include Relationships, Sex, Sexuality and Gender. She is currently conducting research that aims to study the associations between relationship hope and general hope, showing and receiving appreciation in relationships and relationship satisfaction. The results of which could be used to inform individual and couples therapy interventions and improve the quality of relationships. She will start practicum in Fall 2023 and is most looking forward to working with the LGBTQIA+ communities and diverse underserved populations.