Vision

Everyone in diasporic communities are empowered, mentally well, anti-oppressive, engaged, and thriving. We’re creating a community and culture by us, for us, without taboos.

Mission

We seek to cultivate and amplify the third culture by celebrating a diversity of South Asian experiences, developing authentic, personally fulfilling values as second-generation South Asian Americans, and interrogating oppressive cultural values and traditions.

Origin Story

SASMHA started off as a conversation between two siblings, Tania and Trinish, in a kitchen on a summer evening in 2015. Tania, Sree, Trinish and Sriya all grew up in the DMV (aka DC, Maryland, Virginia), attending many community events and get-togethers over the years. The founding of SASMHA was serendipitous, as we came to the realization that the four of us shared many common passions and interests, and that important conversations were not happening openly among peers in our community. Since then, SASMHA has expanded into a formal organization, helmed by the four co-founders at the intersection of sexual health, identity, reproductive health, sexuality, mental health, and above all, what it means to grow up in an immigrant culture, balancing our often-conflicting identities.

In 2016, a year after we began laying the groundwork for SASMHA, we decided to pitch a workshop at the North American Bengali Conference (NABC), a large South Asian cultural conference. We were nervous at the prospect of talking about sex at a brown conference, but rolled up our salwar sleeves and decided to go ahead anyway. Our workshop filled up to full capacity with people who couldn't wait to share their stories with us. We were ecstatic to have an audience that opened up so readily and confirmed for us that we all shared experiences growing up as second generation brown kids - no matter where we came from. NABC was a huge risk but had an amazing payoff, and it's in the spirit of that workshop that we continue doing the work that we do today, because we know that these conversations are important, and our experiences are often universal.

Since then we've gone on to host numerous more workshops, gathered a resource hub, launched a podcast, and highlight community voices in our blog.

Contact us to schedule a workshop or share your story today!

Co-Founders

TANIA CHATTERJEE, MHS

Tania is super passionate about all things sexual health, reproductive health, and HIV, and is a full-time HIV Health Educator working for a major hospital system in the DMV area, and has her Master's in Reproductive Biology from Johns Hopkins University. Prior to moving to the DC area, Tania lived and worked in Baltimore, doing full-time HIV testing and working for organizations such as Planned Parenthood of Maryland, Reaching All HIV+ Muslims of America, and Reproductive Health Initiative. For Tania, SASMHA is a bridge between her professional and personal lives, a way to bring to awareness around sexual health, sexuality, identity, and LGBTQ issues into her South Asian community; it also brings her two cultures - American and South Asian - which are often conflicting, a little closer together. Outside of reproductive/sexual health, Tania is a avid connoisseur of the arts - she's a part time professional photographer, and has been a student of Bharatanatyam, a form of Indian Classical dance, for the past 22 years. Choreography, direction, and costuming are very close to Tania's heart - in the last several years, she has choreographed and directed dance dramas (including several original productions) in the DMV area, and hopes to keep doing more in the future! In her spare time, you might find Tania dreaming about far away places to travel to (her list is ever-growing), and thinking of delicious new foods to cook and eat. 

PRONOUNS: she/her

Washington, D.C.

SREE SINHA, pHd

Dr. Sree Sinha holds a doctorate in Counseling Psychology from the University of Denver where ze specialized in romantic relationships and multicultural counseling, especially with QTPOC. They are presently an LGBTQ+ Advanced Psychology Fellow at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs in the Comprehensive Gender Affirming Care Center, where she also completed her clinical internship. Sree was also a Minority Fellow with the American Psychological Association, having been recognized for her work serving minority mental health needs, especially for South Asian Americans and QPOC (queer people of color).

Dr. Sinha previously worked in community mental health, serving a chronically homeless population with severe and persistent mental illness in Washington, DC. Prior to co-founding SASMHA, she was busy bringing sexual health education to an undergraduate community by founding Sex Week at Maryland. Hir passions also include advocacy and awareness around sustainability and environmental psychology. Ze has been recognized for her leadership and involvement as the 2022 Counseling Psychology Student of the Year, the 2019 Outstanding Doctoral Leader award, and the 2015 Wilson H. Elkins Citizenship Award. In addition to their academic pursuits, Sree is a Company Dancer with Mayur, and has trained for over two decades in the classical Indian dance styles of Odissi and Kuchipudi. Sree describes herself as a genderqueer brown woman, and more specifically, a Bengali bisexual babe.

PRONOUNS: she/ze/any

San Francisco, CA