H.O.L.L.A Programming
We stand on the victories of Black Liberation struggles, while growing capacity to finish incomplete works of Black Liberation as a practice of healing (i.e. organizing, analysis etc) & fighting (i.e., self determination) The WAR. H.O.L.L.A!’s works grows from a Non Traditional Approach to Healing-Centered youth organizing and community wellness praxis that is guided by three (3) political (i.e., theoretical) frameworks that ground our grassroots, spiritual and sociopolitical praxis of resurrection and freedom seeking. They are: 1) African Sacred Science 2) The Non Traditional Approach to Criminal & Social Justice Issues (NTA) & 3) Healing Justice (HJ).
These theorectical frames center african matrillinea culture, sciences & practices of ancestors/elders, a spirit of liberation that transcends beyond oneself, grassroots epistemology, Black radical feminist traditions, and “Community Specffic” praxis of healing and fighting against historical trauma. All these frameworks capture violence as a construct with a long history within Black, Brown and Indiegnous peoples' experiences, learned lessons, & strategies/rituals employed to analyze, fight and heal from The WAR. Healing from the WAR is a process of step by step journey to get well. This understanding of the WAR is critical. These three (3) frameworks stand at the foundation of the four pillars that are centered in all our services, pedagogy, community organizing, leadership development and community outreach.
The Legacy Retreat Center
The Legacy Retreat Center is aims to serve formerly incarcerated, and system-involved, LGBTQI+, and disenfranchised urban youth of color by providing spaces in rural locale.
While hands-on urban farming education as well as farm treks for urban youth and their communities do exist, none explicitly advance community organizing, the combined intrinsic healing, educational and development properties for engaging traumatized youth and communities impacted by the prison industrial complex in nature. The Retreat Center is an intentional practice of healing and development that responds to the prison industrial complex and interpersonal harm experienced by communities attacked by the criminal punishment system or the “seven neighborhood” phenomenon uplifted by the Green Haven Think Tank.
The Ritual Program
The Ritual Program is a building and knowledge sharing platform. H.O.L.L.A!’s Healing Justice Organizers are trained as cultural workers, grassroots communicators and as relationship builders. Our organizers conduct street outreach canvassing in local marginalized communities of color to engage youth of color throughout the city who are not connected to H.O.L.L.A! programs, community organizing, and services. The Ritual Program is a platform to build relationships with youth and their families. We do this by hosting youth-led community events, functions, performing local community canvassing, and attending local community gatherings to meet young people where they are at.
Legacy Youth Organizing Training
The Legacy Youth Organizing Training is a six-month relationship building, political education, skill-building, resource connecting and organizing training for youth between the ages of 13-25 years old, with a focus on engaging youth who have been pushed out of mainstream institutions. The Legacy Training’s objectives are to develop youth of color leadership by building capacity for critical social analysis through political education and socio-emotional development.
The Legacy Training has four interrelated components:
Youth Street Outreach
Programming and Training
Resource (Re)Connecting
Post Program Support
The Youth Organizing Collective (Y.O.C) Training
The Youth Organizing Collective Training is a space to support/assist youth organizers in sustaining relationships, building skills/capacities, and developing political and collective agency needed for their process of transformation and community development. During the Youth Organizing Collective Training Youth organizers will partner with each other and staff organizers to form a multiple layer of “Dream Builders” to provide intimate interpersonal guidance, relationship and shared accountability to reach personal, collective, and other goals.
Build on the following skills:
Community organizing and movement building built on foundations of grassroots ethics.
Artistic modalities and expressions of healing.
Create and maintain a safe space where participants can develop individual and collective identities and a sense of belonging.
Gaining concrete skills in grassroots healing traditions and practices.
Organizational leadership and development.
Policy analysis, curriculum development, facilitation and event planning.
Psycho-spiritual and emotional development.
Re-connecting to indigenous traditions and rituals.
Conceptualize and produce initiatives such as community healing circles, workshops, performing arts programs, and advocacy work promoting institutional realignment and accountability.
Get involved!
Earn $1,000 per month as a Youth Organizer to build communities and create safer, braver spaces for our families and communities while engaging and developing as healers and organizers.
Required:
The Youth Organizing Collective is open to young leaders, ages 13-25, who have completed the The Legacy Youth Organizing Training.
How Our Lives Link Altogether! (H.O.L.L.A!) has a strong track record of providing training, and technical assistance to many different collectives, institutions, community-based organizations, social services agencies and people from various lifestyles and professional backgrounds. We design and facilitate curriculums for workshops and trainings, communal building and healing circles/environments for grassroots, social services agencies and institutions ranging.
We have a skilled, experienced and dedicated team with a history of influencing the strategic direction of organizations and visionary initiatives. We have with leading institutions such as Riker’s Island, New York University, New York City Department of Health, and Far Rockaway Youth Task force.
What’s included:
Meeting, Planning, Curriculum and Assessment Development:
Training and Facilitation
Travel, Transportation and lodging
TA Services and Follow up
Human and Healing Justing Themes
- Youth & Community Activist
- Participatory Action Research
- Vulnerability and 360: Personal
- Vulnerability and 360: Social
- “Hood/Grassroots/Indigenous/Black/Brown”
- Love as Our Foundation
- Family Building and Love
- Legacy Building: Fight The Power Film Series
- Landing on Our Process
- Dream Building
- Justice Pillars
- Campaign Development
- Human and Healing justice analysis, pedagogy and organizing
- Our Culture and our People’s Culture and Identities
- The People and System of Oppressions
- Introduction to Youth Community Organizing: Learning about Movements and Movement Building Part 1
- Introduction to Youth Community Organizing: Learning about Movements and Movement Building