Since 2021, the Healing the Wounds of Slavery project has been recognised as an important initiative of UNESCO Routes of Enslaved Peoples. This work focuses on advancing collective healing, social justice and global well-being. Therefore, we have decided to change the default website URL from ‘Healing the Wounds of Slavery’ to ‘Collective-Healing’.
Until this time, the UNESCO Routes of Enslaved Peoples Project dedicated last three decades to breaking the silence about the histories of transatlantic slavery, and encouraging our shared recognition of the continued intergenerational trauma, and the legacies of structural dehumanisation. Now it is time to introduce future-facing strategies that aim to engage global communities in collective healing.
Currently, the Collective Healing Initiative consists of four mutually reinforcing iterative processes:
1. Collective Healing, Social Justice and Global Well-Being:
- To launch intergenerational dialogue & inquiry pilots in communities in four continents and explore historical wounds connected to the legacies of slavery and colonialism.
- To invite and gather narratives of resilience and examples of indigenous knowledge, wisdom and practices of collective healing.
- To co-develop a bespoke Collective Healing Programme based on learnings from the inquiries.
- To pilot the programme in the community facilitated by women and youths.
2. Empowering Women and Youths:
- To establish an innovative UNESCO Future Leaders Academy
- To offer co-created transformative competences programmes for empowering women and youth facilitators – the driving forces of the bespoke collective healing programmes in different communities.
- To nurture, enable and support women and youths to become pillars of their communities who will collaborate in confronting systemic discrimination and intolerance in worldwide communities.
3. Research, Evaluation and developing UNESCO Policy Brief:
- To develop academic and interdisciplinary research for understanding and evaluating participating communities’ experiences of collective healing, well-being and regeneration.
- To analyse meaningful impacts across the different communities involved in the Project.
- To propose a UNESCO policy brief that characterises institutional conditions for social transformation.
4. Implementation and Dissemination:
- To improve and implement collective healing programmes in relevant communities.
- To mobilise NGOs and partners to provide continuous support to women and youth facilitators and offer leadership opportunities for them to introduce collective healing to wider societies.
- To distribute and share research findings and disseminate policy briefs and learnings through publications, webinars, and conferences.