Our Approach

We offer multidimensional, multidisciplinary immersion trips that use intergroup dialogue strategies facilitated by experienced leaders: Multidimensional—Our trips seek to affect the whole person—mind, heart and body. The first two—mind and heart—are easily understood. History, and the telling of it, impacts how we think and feel(1). What has been neglected until recently is the impact of enduring racism, injustice, trauma, and re-traumatization on the human body (2). Multidisciplinary—Our trips include readings and discussion topics that draw from history, science, theology, sociology, psychology and other disciplines. The history of race and racism and of Africans in the New World is tainted by so many mixed motivations that to unravel it requires serious engagement with all the various arguments that shaped the existing narratives. Those arguments have at times been theological, scientific, historical, sociological, and psychological. Immersive—Our trips are designed to put participants in contact with the daily realities of life in the country. We interact with local professionals, artisans, educators, and community leaders. Our motivation for these visits is to educate through a transformational learning experience with and from the people and communities we visit. REFERENCES (1)L Comas-Díaz and F M Jacobsen, “Ethnocultural Allodynia,” The Journal Of Psychotherapy Practice And Research 10, no. 4 (2001 Fall 2001): 246–52. (2)Allison Crawford, “If ‘The Body Keeps the Score’: Mapping the Dissociated Body in Trauma Narrative, Intervention, and Theory,” no. 2 (2010): 702, https://doi.org/10.1353/utq.2010.0231.