About AAWWH: Institutional Identity & Four Portals

The central purpose of the “The Alasal Tarey Restoration Transformation Praxis (African American Wholistic Wellness HUB Complex) is to honor and apply traditional practices and healing approaches that respect and build upon the cultural integrity and humanity of African American people. We will be training future licensed Black therapists, and providing  culturally congruent (African centered) capacities for the enhancement of agencies, and organizations serving African American people. The Hub will function as a learning laboratory for exploring and implementing the best ideas and practices for the restoration of African American Wellness.

Functionally, the Hub will consist of the following four operational strands or portals: Portal 1. Nganga ná Dibuti (aka Therapist in Residency), Portal 2. Ndamu ye Diaku (aka, Organizational Capacity Enhancement Training), 3. Portal #3 Zola-Ngolo (aka treatment and services) and Portal 4. Kizungu kia Kanda (aka Outreach Linkaging). This program and services portal represents the institution of the third strand of the programmatic design of the Alasal Tarey Transformative Restoration Praxis (formerly called the African American Wholistic Hub Complex). This will mark the initial implementation and institutionalization of profound African Psychology based co-restorative practices, procedures, understandings, classifying strategies, theoretical and engagement foundation that reflect a major and necessary Paradigm shift in thinking about behavior, the meaning of being, the focus of services and the nature of restorative healing.

The Therapist-in-Residency Program is developed specifically to address the absence of culturally congruent service providers trained to address the mental health needs of the African American community by working with existing services while developing new authentic educational and training models and services.

The program will formally retain a select team of seasoned licensed psychologists to provide culturally congruent training to psychology interns to enhance their skillset and knowledge base. Under supervision of the licensed psychologists, the interns will be deployed to community-based organizations to provider restoration services for African American clients.

Capacity enhancement is needed because agencies cannot produce equitable outcomes using frameworks built without African American epistemologies, histories, or lived realities in mind. The shift is not just cosmetic. It is ontological and epistemological. It changes how agencies define human being, suffering, healing, and community. Without it, agencies risk continuing cycles of misunderstanding, mistrust, and misdiagnosis. With it, agencies become spaces and places of restoration, dignity affirmation, and cultural congruence, where African American communities experience the restoration of wellness.

The primary objective of Zola Ngolo, is to provide comprehensive African Healing and Restorative Services designed to support healing, renew Personhood (individual), Familyhood (family) and Peoplehood (community) bonds and connections. Services will be provided in person, virtually, in homes with families, at other agencies and venues and in the community. All activities and collaborations will be to assist in restoring overall wellness and healthy practices for individuals, families and groups. Restorer services will target the unhoused, returning veterans, formerly incarcerated, institutionally traumatized, emotionally disconnected, those suffering from Inter-generational Sensoria-Harm, street and lay-workers, young children and elders.

The Outreach Linkaging Process serves as the Neighborhood activation arm of the Alasal Tarey Restoration Transformation Program (ATRTP) Initiative. It establishes reciprocal relationships with institutions and community stakeholders to ensure that restoration, paradigm shifting, and cultural affirmation extend beyond the Hub into the lived spaces of the people. It serves as the circulatory system of the Hub connecting people, families, neighborhoods, portals, and partners in a coherent, culturally grounded ecology of wellness. It represents the energetic campaign that prevents isolation and sustains ecosystemic wellness.