at mnrc laura has partnered with the san francisco psychiatric foundation and the harm therapy center to provide psychotherapy and psychiatric services to mnrc's participants. presently mnrc is developing its own mental health team by hiring social workers and ftes who are bilingual and buy cultural and practice harm reduction therapy to meet people where they are and to collaborate with them in the direction of positive healthy change. laura's passion for work stems from the fact that she herself is a survivor of childhood trauma and has been working through posttraumatic stress disorder and working on her own healing and recovery. i don't know that anyone who has done work in this area not only in the mission district but in the city and county of san francisco who doesn't know laura guzman and what she represents. i don't really know what the right description for laura is. in my mind i think laura is sort of a force of nature that she has the ability of bringing people together. and what's remarkable about the work that she does is that she works with a population that is very cha

and also i wanted to say real quickly, laura guzman, i love the work that you do so much and i think our city would be so much less if we couldn't call mnrc one of refuge in our city. mental health, i want to thank former supervisor bevan dufty and supervisor malia cohen for suggesting that we honor individuals that work in this area for mental health awareness month. for many reasons this issue is something that is of great importance to me. one, because of the district i represent. this is actually one of our top priority issues in our district. it is something that we in our office face every day, how do we address the issue of mental health in this city. and second, for me it's very personal. i've watched many of my really, really good friends and family members struggle with mental health and i see how difficult and challenging it is. so, i do want to thank everyone in this room for the work that they do on this incredibly fine issue. i'm sorry to get emotional. my honoree for mental health awareness month has served the bay area for over 30 years. and for the last 18 years has worked at coner's house director of housing for communit