REST is Black Liberation!

TAIBU Community Health Centre hosted the second national conference on Black Mental Health and Wellbeing entitled “ACT Now! 2nd National Conference on Black Mental Health and Wellbeing” under the theme Rest is Black Liberation. The ACT Now! Black Mental Health and Wellness Annual National Conference is an annual event conceived in 2023.

As part of the Amandla Olwazi project the conference was intended to generate opportunities for Afrocentric knowledge gathering, sharing, knowledge mobilization, and networking centered on Black mental health in Canada.

The 2024 conference envisaged a broader dialogue and knowledge exchange between community and mainstream organizations and institutions to identify a path towards systems change. The knowledge gathered from this event will continue to garner additional Afrocentric ‘knowledge’ to be translated into ‘power’ for change (hence Olwazi into Amandla = Amandla Olwazi – the Power of Knowledge) In addition, the experience of sharing and exchanging various perspectives and lived experiences within the diverse Black communities has an enriching and healing effect for the participants.

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Theme Preference:

When asked about the three top themes they would like to participate in, the majority of registrants selected the Power of Community.

The Power of Community
Intergenerational Health / Wealth
Policy, Research & Advocacy
Rest as Liberation

Participants:

Participants, one prior to the conference and a second as part of the post-conference evaluation. Participants registered for the event through an online portal, by invitations, through referrals, and promotion through work colleagues. the conference questionnaire was used to gather basic demographic information of participants . Accordingly, data was collected from 175 registrants. Their responses was further used to inform the content and program flow.

Participants were from seven Canadian provinces and 35 cities across Canada. In terms of country of origin, they represented over 30 countries.75% and 22% of the registered participants were female and male respectively. The remaining 2% identified as others and 1% preferred not to identify their gender.

Conference participants were from a variety of mainstream organizations and institutions, grassroots organizations serving racialized communities, diverse and multidisciplinary team members from health and social services sectors, Black leaders, Black elders, Black youth, Black 2SLGBTQ+, newcomers, academia, research institutions, interfaith communities, and decision-makers

More Demographics Data

Overall experience of the Conference:

The average satisfaction rate given by participants was 4.5 our of 5.

Some quotes from the participants include:

“The conference was absolutely phenomenal, keep up the great work!”
“The conference was well organized. Volunteers were accessible”
“It seems to get better every year”
“I like the way it was organized. Venue was great. Rooms, food and snack were great. It was an enjoyable conference”
“I will make time for deliberate rest and I have learned to say NO without feeling under pressure…”

More Evaluation Data