National CARES Wellness Circles Root Healing and Restorative Practices in Communities

CARES Wellness Circles Root

Healing and Restorative Practices in Communities

For several years our Wellness Mentoring Circles have provided a place for marginalized youngsters and parents to gather in small groups to discuss and heal the traumas of living in poverty. Thanks to your support, these safe spaces have helped place thousands on paths to wellness in mind, body and spirit.

We are thrilled to announce that this year, CARES affiliates across the nation are launching Community Wellness Circles to help local leaders, mentors and parents create more healthy, fulfilling lives. Led by CARES-trained facilitators, the circle design helps African American adults identify and eliminate debilitating stress that makes us--at every economic and social strata--disproportionately vulnerable to high incidences of hypertension, stroke, diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease and other life-threatening illnesses that lead to early death. CARES' Community Wellness Circles open the way to greater self-awareness, self-love and community restoration. The restorative principles and practices help African Americans to heal our hurt, depression and self-denial, rarely named or recognized but internalized over 400 years of enslavement and legalized racial subordination.

Harry Belafonte, our elder guide in creating our life-transforming, framing curriculum, A New Way Forward: Healing What's Hurting Black America, wisely counsels: "We will never be able to fix what most affects our children until we heal what most affects us." Community Wellness Circles are for adults who want to de-stress and live wholesome, fulfilling lives; who want to work well in concert to build healthy, cooperative communities where our challenged children will rise to their potential and thrive. Wellness circles have launched in 10 of the 58 U.S. cities where CARES affiliates are working to advance our young.

To find out how to get involved, contact Christopher Thompson, CARES Director of Affiliate Relations, at cthompson@caresmentoring.org or 917.841.1136.

We thank you for your support and belief that transforming lives is possible. A new world is on the way and together we will help bring it forth...

For the Children,