Umuwi Ethnic Studies

“There’s this presumption that the adults can actually provide healing, when in fact they need healing, when in fact they have stuff that they [need] to be reconciled in their own professional and personal lives. So by expanding the capacity for schools to support the well-being of the teaching workforce, by its very investment, the hope is that it will also open up possibilities to focusing on the healing and well-being of young people.” --Dr. Shawn Ginwright We are filled with nervous excitement, wonder, and gratitude today as we prepare for tonight's launch of our Racial Healing & Resourcing Cohort for and with 16 amazing, BIPOC justice-centered educators. From now through mid-June, we're partnering with members of our Umuwi crew to cultivate structures and acts of care as an antidote to, and in resistance to, the structures of unwellness that permeate our lives and our heartmindbodyspirits. Maraming salamat/deep gratitude to the many, many healers, culture keepers, and warriorscholars who have influenced our understandings and our practices of creating homeplaces, where, as bell hooks teaches us, "we return for renewal and self-recovery, where we can heal our wounds and become whole." Shout out to these amazing partners and co-strugglers in our journeys to confront our unwellness and co-create structures of care, healing and resourcing (check out mimi khúc's incredible new book, dear elia: Letters from the Asian American Abyss for more about a pedagogy of unwellness): Stacey A. Gibson, Transform the Collective Rito Martinez, Love and Liberation Executive Coaching and Consulting Dorian A. Ortega, LCPC, FLY Radical Therapy Maraliz Salgado, Libérate Life Coaching Dr. Asif Wilson, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign We go together, and the love and trust that fuels our partnerships is magic and medicine. Finally, thank you to these people and organizations for believing in us, recognizing the imperative of this work in this moment, and directing resources (i.e. funding) our way: AMPT: Advancing Nonprofits, Healing Illinois/United Way of Champaign County and 4.0.

We started off our week in a beautiful space, created by Dr. Anna Quinzio-Zafran and Elizabeth A. Wilkins, Ph.D. from the New Teacher Talk podcast! Our founder/co-director Cecily Relucio spoke about the lasting impact of being a student in Dr. Anna's 1st grade classroom almost 50 years ago, a classroom that was rooted in an ethic of love, care, and cultural responsiveness. Dr. Anna & Cecily dialogued about their visions and beliefs about what is needed in order to demand and protect a culturally responsive, anti-racist, ethnic studies education that is rooted in love and care for all of our young people as well as their teachers. Stay tuned for the episode launch, coming soon! #EthnicStudiesIsOurHomeplace #EthnicStudiesNow #EthnicStudiesChicago

With joy and deep gratitude, we’re thrilled to announce that Tamara Prather will expand her commitment to Umuwi Ethnic Studies from serving on the board to co-directing the organization alongside our founder, Cecily Relucio! Tamara is an empathetic, Spirit-led leader who nurtures self and others towards personal and collective wellness, growth and liberation. She is a Liberatory Coach & Consultant and her practice holds abolition, transformative justice, sovereignty, and Self-determination as core beliefs. Informed and driven by her personal story as a Black woman and someone who is intimately familiar with the struggles born of racial capitalism, she is passionate about protecting, expanding and sustaining ethnic studies as foundational to the survival, wholeness and thriving of BIPOC and multiply marginalized peoples. Tamara lives in the historic Bronzeville community, and is a daughter, sister, auntie and sister-friend, who embraces joy cultivation and building beloved community as necessary practices to dreaming and constructing new worlds. Previously, Tamara was the Executive Director of Surge Chicago where she and Cecily built a thriving partnership as leaders of the Chicago Surge Fellowship for six years. They created a container of healing and transformation for Black and Latine education leaders that centered relationships and beloved community. It was in this space that they first practiced co-creating a homeplace and centering the practice of culturally and community responsive leadership. Rooted in what is already present in their relationship - sacred love and trust, values alignment, immense respect, and complementary experiences and talents - Tamara and Cecily are excited to live and learn into an even deeper version of their relationship, through co-directing Umuwi Ethnic Studies. Their intentional decision to co-direct will allow them to practice a nonhierarchical distribution of power, and cultivate the possibilities that can emerge from that place of disruption and reimagination of dominant structures of leadership. Please join us in welcoming Tamara as the Co-Director of Umuwi Ethnic Studies! #WeAreEthnicStudies #EthnicStudiesChicago #EthnicStudiesNow #Homeplace

Our first public event sold out before we could post it to social media! But we still wanted to share our excitement about next week's Fireside Chat. Umuwi Ethnic Studies is excited to host a "fireside chat" dialogue between renowned scholars, Dr. Bettina Love and Dr. David Omotoso Stovall. Their dialogue will center on Dr. Love's New York Times bestselling book, Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal. The book is an account of four decades of educational reform through the lens of people deeply impacted by it. Dr. Love offers a road map for repair, calling for educational reparations to move education toward healing and transformation. Following the program, Dr. Love and Dr. Stovall will be available for book signings and refreshments will be served. Semicolon Bookstore, a Black woman-owned, local Chicago business, is our bookseller. Thank you to our sponsors: University of Illinois at Chicago Department of Black Studies Northeastern Illinois University Carruthers Center for Inner-City Studies, Goodwin College of Education and College of Arts and Sciences The Chicago Community Trust

Our Founder/Co-Director Cecily Relucio is honored to be a member of the 2024 Cultivate Women of Color Leadership Cohort.

We are deeply honored to be supported and celebrated by and with our peers at Asian Giving Circle, and deeply in awe of the powerful work of all of the grantee partners!

We are partnering with Dr. Asif Wilson at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to offer a Racial Healing and Resourcing cohort experience for BIPOC justice-centered educators in Illinois this spring! The experience will center individual and collective racial healing and resourcing as a necessary practice in order to sustain our commitments to practicing healing, justice and liberation in our classrooms, schools and learning spaces. Cohort members attend a series of 4 virtual and 1 in-person sessions on 4/25, 5/4, 5/18, 6/1, 6/15, focused on: - Building understanding about the root causes and impacts of racialized violence and why racial healing and resourcing is necessary for our survival and sustenance - Engaging healing practices of various modalities - Setting intentions and plans for their healing and resourcing practices - Engaging healing-centered frameworks and practices that educators can incorporate into their work with young people Priority will be given to: - BIPOC justice-centered practitioners - People committed to investing in their well-being & co-creating an accountable community of care - Practitioners working in/adjacent to K-12 schools & youth-serving spaces in Illinois Participation is free and participants earn 24 PD hours upon completion. The experience is funded through grants from Healing Illinois and AMPT: Advancing Nonprofits. Join our virtual information session on Wednesday, 3/6: https://lnkd.in/gdX4nQdR. Applications are due Monday, 3/18: http://tinyurl.com/RHRApp. We aim to notify cohort members of acceptance by Monday, 4/1.

We were honored to participate in the Project Elevate community program, where we honed our nonprofit business and marketing skills and networked with other nonprofits in the AMPT community. Thank you to AMPT: Advancing Nonprofits Chicago Bulls and PepsiCo for your support of Chicago non-profit leaders like us!