CREATIVE KUPONYA
CK Origin Story
Jamil and Sara Stamschror-Lott started Creative Kuponya in 2017 as an answer to the harms of the traditional mental health model. Creative Kuponya is on a mission to bring high quality therapy care to humans who have been historically pushed to the margins without the barriers of insurance and forced diagnosis. The work to decolonize mental health models started a movement that expanded into partnerships with other agencies, nonprofits, schools, law firms, faith bodies and municipalities.
Then 2020 happened….
Therapy numbers quadrupled due to the pressures of COVID and the tragic murder of George Floyd. During that time, Creative Kupnya lost their offices in the civil unrest. The community was incredibly generous with their financial support in rebuilding the offices; therefore, the remaining dollars were used to begin the Creative Kuponya BIPOC Therapy Fund, offering no cost therapy sessions to folks and families in need. Also, during this time, we developed our theory of Transformative Community Healing, which was our response to large level community care and radical therapeutic justice.
To date, Creative Kuponya is honored to have provided over 6000 low or no cost therapy sessions, hundreds of psychoeducation presentations and keynotes as well as hundreds of Transformative Community Healing Sessions.
Jamil Stamschror-Lott, LICSW is a licensed mental health professional and an educator. As a Black man, he represents less than 4% of licensed therapists in America. Jamil and his wife Sara co-founded Creative Kuponya, an organization that seeks to dismantle the systemic racism and oppressive forces embedded within our mental health systems and provide therapeutic justice to those that society has pushed into the margins.
Creative Kuponya seeks to be a community with access to restructured, innovative mental health care at the intersection of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion through three main avenues: individual therapy, transformative community healing sessions, education & training.
Among many other accolades, Jamil and Creative Kuponya have been featured in Rolling Stone Magazine, The New York Times, and USA Today.
