Rooted Rising: South LA Wellness Incubator

Health care access

South LA South Bay City of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a citywide benefit) County of Los Angeles (select only if your project has a countywide benefit)

Pilot or new project, program, or initiative (testing or implementing a new idea)

Many communities in South Los Angeles face a deep lack of access to culturally relevant, preventative reproductive and holistic health care. Black and Brown birthing people experience disproportionately high rates of maternal mortality and postpartum complications. Meanwhile, the practitioners working to serve these communities often do so without sustainable pay, support, or resources to continue. We are addressing both the care gap and the practitioner pipeline.

Rooted Rising is a practitioner-led wellness incubator grounded in South LA. The initiative will begin with an intensive 12-week training and cultural immersion for the founder of Queen by Nature Wellness, with knowledge and frameworks brought back to the community. The grant will support the transformation of the QBN space into a womb-centered healing hub, where doulas, wellness workers, and community members gather for care, training, and restoration. The program will provide culturally rooted doula services, educational workshops, and group wellness offerings. It includes a$20,000 Practitioner Sustainability Fund to ensure the lead practitioner’s wellness, insurance, rest, and leadership development, modeling a care-for-the-caregiver framework that sustains long-term service. This project will grow local capacity to meet urgent wellness needs with ancestral, community-informed approaches.

Los Angeles County will be home to a community-based, womb-centered wellness hub that models what sustainable, culturally competent care looks like. There will be more doulas of color trained and supported in serving families across South LA. More birthing people will have access to nurturing, trauma-informed services that honor their whole being. And the practitioner behind the work will be well enough — financially, mentally, and spiritually — to continue the work, mentor others, and expand the vision. This is how we build generational health and rooted leadership.