Wellness  Resilience Resource Hub

Creating spaces, places and processes to ensure the wellness of civic catalysts

The Wellness Resilience Resource Hub is inspired by the conviction that the East  African Region, specifically  Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda needs a sanctuary for those citizens amongst us who have dedicated their lives to pursuing the public interest, often at great cost to themselves and their families.  The Wellness Resilience Resource Hub comprises places, processes and spaces for individuals and collective civic actors (Civic Catalysts – Whether currently active or in retirement and their immediate families. Civil Veterans – Retired from frontline engagement as civil activists but who have been Civil society actors in one way or another for a significant  Time. Civil Thinkers – people working on intellectual projects on civil society.  Civil Supporters – Institutions and or individuals who invested in supporting civil Activists as their own contribution) to rest, reflect, heal, learn and invest, far from the stressors and pressures of organizing and agitating. The Wellness Resilience Resource Hub is being facilitated by Inuka Kenya Ni Sisi Ltd, Uganda National NGO Forum and Legal and Human Rights Centre in Tanzania.

“There are no systems, structures, or practices that help us identify Wellness problems, yet the Civil society space is very toxic because it is always evolving. The talk about Wellness is centred around mental health without first addressing what happens to the person, the body before arriving at having an unhealthy mind and what could be done to mitigate the outcomes.

‘It’s not right that one spends their life going after unfair government policies, and unjust systems and the time they no longer have the energy to do anything or the resources to do it they crawl into a hole in the village and die a nondescript human without a eulogy’

~ Kawive,  Inuka Kenya

The Wellness hub is a part of a larger South South Resilience network that includes Financial resilience, ICT resilience, Capacity resilience and Protection resilience. The wellness hub through its service if self- care, wellness and well- being for organizations and civic rights will generate solutions that go against ableism, Colonial Tendencies, sexism and Racism

Why the Wellness Hub?

The civic actors in the Region (Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda) have been instrumental in bringing about robust citizen activism, sadly they continue to endure trauma resilience from their activism even decades later. The range of resources, opportunities and spaces available to them to meet their needs have also changed considerably.In the past, civic catalysts have come under all manner of attack, putting their physical, mental, spiritual and emotional health at risk to the point of endangering their very lives. Some have endured detention, imprisonment and even been forced into exile. Others have found themselves ostracized by society, maligned, discredited, bankrupted and/or forced to undergo punitive legal suits, all with the aim of punishing them and thus deterring them (and others) from doing this work.

There are a number of potential factors for increased civil actor’s vulnerability:  work related trauma and environment, poverty, disability, social class, marital and childbearing roles, lack of education, and social oppression. However, anecdotal evidence suggests most of this morbidity is unrecognized and untreated. Civil actors tend not to seek help because of stigma, poverty, lack of awareness, and lack of access to care. Even when they are able to access care and are prescribed treatment, they drop out of treatment due to lack of compliance, the adverse side effects and the costs of continuing treatment. Thus, mental health and wellbeing poses a major economic burden on Civil Actors and adversely impacts their work and livelihoods. 

How- The aim of the wellness agenda will be to build, protect, restore and ensure human dignity, harnessing a positive and resilient collective identity, and fostering trust between the citizens and the state actors. To create an ecosystem of diverse organization and civic formations by providing technical assistance focused on movement building, wellness and digital media.  

Key priority Interventions: 

  1. The Place: This refers to the physical spaces, owned and/or run by Tulia. The sanctuary will preferably be away from any major city consisting of Individual and group (family/team) retreat spaces and relaxation spaces. This will be embedded in the ecosystem of the local community in as many ways as possible.
  2. Spaces: This refers to making accessible to the Tulia constituencies, processes or places not facilitated or operated by Tulia, but deemed appropriate and relevant to Tulia processes – Resting, Reflecting, Healing, Learning and Investing. This refers to the activities (both individual and collective) that will be encouraged, enabled where possible and/or facilitated either directly or through partnerships.
  3. Processes: This refers to the mental processes, both individual and collective, that will be tapped and enhanced, using the existing local resources from the community level upwards. (Resting, Reflecting, Healing, Learning and Investing)

Services

  • Wellness assessment
  • Assistance with wellness systems development for organisations
  • Wellness resilience training
  • Supporting individual processes of physical, psychological, and emotional healing, and the sorting out of personal wellness affairs.
  • Facilitating personal legacy projects for civil veterans,
  • Providing spaces and places to facilitate wellness work

If you need any of the above services, send us an email at kenya@eawellnesshub.org.