Author: SchertoGill

This Handbook is intended to support the efforts of facilitators and other professionals who are interested in hosting a Collective Healing Circle (CHC) Programme in their local community, as part of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Collective Healing Initiative. The intellectual insights underpinning the CHC Programme proposed in this Handbook are drawn from contemporary research on historical atrocities, such as the transatlantic trade of enslaved Africans, colonialisation, and mass killing and violent displacement of Indigenous peoples, as well as the legacies of dehumanisation, such as racism and structural injustice. The practical ideas for implementing the CHC Programme featured throughout the Handbook are inspired by existing proven approaches of similar programmes, and those which have emerged from a one-year pilot of the Programme in five countries (Kenya, Nigeria, the UK, the USA and Colombia) on four continents. The UNESCO Collective Healing Initiative is a global initiative to address the legacies of dehumanisation and to confront contemporary racism and discrimination, supported by the Guerrand-Hermès Foundation for Peace (GHFP) since 2018. It is part of the UNESCO Routes of Enslaved Peoples programme. From the start, the initiative involved research aimed at understanding what constitutes wounding and healing in the contexts of transatlantic trade and enslavement of Africans and structural injustice.