News
Celebrating Black History Month & World Mental Health Day
The theme for this year’s Black History Month is “Reclaiming Narratives,” and World Mental Health Day (which took place on 10th October) explored the theme of “Mental Health at Work.” The World Mental Health Organisation – highlights the vital connection between mental health and work. Safe, healthy working environments can act as a protective factor for mental health. Unhealthy conditions including stigma, discrimination, burn out and exposure to risks like harassment and other poor working conditions can impact overall mental health well-being within the workplace.
These two themes together highlight how important mental well-being is within our diverse and cultural communities. Black History Month this year was pivotal in revisiting history; taking ownership of the stories that define our cultural, our contributions, and our identity. Black History Month is a call to action for Black communities across the UK – to step into the role of storytellers.
We held several workshops over the duration of Black History Month with the aim to inspire, motivate and educate our service users through sharing experiences of mental health – the good and the bad of sharing experiences through our black heritage.
Service users enjoyed our cultural workshops
We held several workshops including:
- The History of Africa
- Self Care Workshop – Loving yourself from the roots up
- Overcoming Adversity – knowing your truth – A workshop for Men
- Kuumba’s Caribbean Afternoon Tea / World Mental Health Day
Service users enjoyed the workshops with some great feedback and it was lovely to come together in particular for the Caribbean Afternoon Tea – where we had an open floor discussion around mental health and how it impacts us within the dysphoria. The Self Care Workshop encouraged people to love themselves and the activity of the balloon release allowed service users to feel liberated in letting go of any negativity. We must remember that Black History month should not just be one dedicated month out of the year – but instead we should be celebrating Black History continuously and we should educate and inspire those less knowledgeable of our struggles.
A big thank you to all of those who took part in our celebrations and facilitating workshops including; Dickson Mommoh (Outreach worker) Jadelyn Arron (Counsellor) and Ricardo Wright (External facilitator). We would also like to thank our partners who made donations to our wonderful Afternoon Tea – Thank you to Tesco (West Bromwich, New Square) Island Delight, Sunrise Bakery and our amazing little helper, Edijah Powell who baked and donated us cupcakes for our Caribbean Afternoon Tea!
We look forward to facilitating more cultural workshops soon.
