Welcome to the Cultural Wellness Center ...

Create and Follow a Map to Wellness

Reduce stress in your life. Regain a sense clarity, balance and purpose. Work on a step-by-step process for personal health, cultural and spiritual well-being. Make an appointment with Semerit Seankh-ka, MD, MSW; Cara Carlson Bassett, LICSW; Janice Barbee, Elder or Atum Azzahir, Elder. Call 612—721—5745

Develop a Birthing Team

Food and Culture: Africa

Monday, July 7, 3:00 PM

The Cultural Wellness Center is recruiting participants of African heritage to discuss and research cultural perspectives on food, and we’d love to have you join us!

Topics will include:

• What foods did your parents and ancestors grow up eating? 
• What foods and cooking methods do you associate with your culture?
• What spiritual aspects of your culture have shaped approaches to food? 
• What is your connection to food? 
• Do you know where your food comes from?
• How have the foods you eat, how you prepare them, and your eating habits changed over the years?
• What can we learn from traditional ways of growing and preparing foods to be healthier personally and as a community?

The next meeting is scheduled for Monday, July 7th, from 3:00 to 4:30 pm, at the Center.  Our topic is medicinal foods. Participants will do some research into cultural medicinal foods by asking family members and elders, and/or looking in books and on the internet.

Email:   abebech@ppcwc.org, Phone:  612-721-5745

*  There will also be a European group (see below) – the groups will occasionally meet together.

Can’t make it to the first meeting, but still want to take part?  Contact Mimi and let her know – day-time meetings will be arranged given enough interested participants…

African American Keys to Self Care

Our goal is to give members of the community knowledge about and strategies for eliminating unnecessary sickness and disease that are tied to history. Wednesdays, 5:30 - 8 PM, at 965 Payne Ave., St. Paul, Call for more information, 651-717-4950
 

Valuing and Celebrating Senior Wellness

On the second Thursday of each month, from 12:30 - 2 PM, senior men and women 65-91 years old gather to reflect, eat and celebrate health. This is also a place where we restore the authority of the Elders. RSVP to Elder Atum at 621-721-5745.

Black Focus on the Black Family

We are at a time when the cultural values which had given black people the resiliency for uprightness, kindness and respect must be resurfaced, remembered and re-voiced because we have lost the memory of what they are, and consequently, our parenting behaviors and attitudes reflect this lost memory.

The purpose of the course is to bring to surface the collective memory of how black people produced amazing personalities that were anchored in way of being that was upright, kind and deeply loving. These personalities were created within the black family-community under unimaginably harsh conditions; during the darkest and most extreme periods of our experience in the United States. RSVP Ann at 612-721-5745.

Cultural Wellness for Professionals of African Heritage

This is a nine-week course that consists of an intense, in-depth, interactive dialog on workforce, work ethic, team-building, leadership, culture, heritage and the people-hood of African Americans.

The central goal of this class is to develop culturally-specific strategies for negotiating workplace stress among African Americans as a way to enhance professional performance. 

Class participants may take one class or they may take the entire series of sessions. Each major session will be followed by an “action-steps” session for participants to receive ways to apply what they have learned in their professional lives. This course is co-taught by cultural elders and professionals of African heritage. RSVP Karames at 612-721-5745.

African Women's Reproductive Health

This is a three and a half hour workshop for health care providers and others who are interested in understanding the cultural meanings behind some of the traditions and cultural practices of African immigrant women which impact their health.

Workshop participants are encouraged to examine assumptions they might have about African immigrant women and the unintentional consequences that those assumptions might create in the delivery of optimal care for their women patients from Africa.

The workshop includes a ritual, a lecture, story-telling, a short video and a small group discussion to gain insight into the best methods for delivering culturally sensitive and culturally appropriate health care to African immigrant women and girls. RSVP Brikti at 612-721-5745.

Food and Culture: Europe

Monday, July 7, 3:00 PM

The Cultural Wellness Center is recruiting participants of European heritage to discuss and research cultural perspectives on food, and we’d love to have you join us!

Topics will include:

• What foods did your parents and ancestors grow up eating? 
• What foods and cooking methods do you associate with your culture?
• What spiritual aspects of your culture have shaped approaches to food? 
• What is your connection to food? 
• Do you know where your food comes from?
• How have the foods you eat, how you prepare them, and your eating habits changed over the years?
• What can we learn from traditional ways of growing and preparing foods to be healthier personally and as a community?

The next meeting is scheduled for Monday, July 7th, from 3:00 to 4:30 pm at the Center.  Our topic is medicinal foods. Participants will do some research into cultural medicinal foods by asking family members and elders, and/or looking in books and on the internet.

*  There will also be an African group (see above) – the groups will occasionally meet together.

Can’t make it to the first meeting, but still want to take part?  Contact Janice and let her know – day-time meetings will be arranged given enough interested participants…

Learning Circle on Reconciliation

Wednesday, July 9, 6:30 – 8:30 pm.

Meets monthly (Future dates to be determined)

You are invited to be a part of a learning community of European Americans who work or want to work to promote the reconciliation and healing of historical relationships and injustices, to explore how to welcome and utilize knowledge of all cultures, and to produce knowledge about how we may more effectively teach and model ways to be in relationship with each other across culture.

All members of the group would be responsible for teaching from their experience and knowledge. The emphasis would be on people’s day to day experience and how this can be applied to help others learn to engage with and work with people of diverse cultures. We hope to create a community of teachers/learners who can support each other in this work.

In July we will continue our discussion about our cultural identity -- including the three layers which contribute to our identity:  whiteness, European American culture and root cultures.  We will include a discussion on cultural appropriation.  For more information and/or to RSVP, contact Janice Barbee at 612-721-5745 or janice@ppcwc.org.

The Concept of Land in the European American/European Tradition

Two sessions in September. Dates to be announced. Please RSVP to Janice if interested. Email: janice@ppcwc.org

Land is a powerful concept in Western culture/s.  The need for land for agriculture, the ownership of land and the status that gives, the cultural lore and symbols connected to land, our spiritual connection to land, the concept of sovereignty and the land, rituals with the land, the effects of moving away from our homeland, the way our geography makes us who we are – so much of our culture and our sense of well-being is rooted in the land.  We will explore our cultural history, understandings, and connections to land and the implications for health and harmony in our lives today.

Cultural Knowledge, Health, and Contemporary Cultural Communities

(Taught in fall and spring)

The central goal of this course is that students understand how their personal cultural experience affects their view of  health, illness, and healing and how this impacts professional practice. Students will learn in a setting of contact with the wisdom of cultural communities based on a curriculum developed and field tested at the Cultural Wellness Center. We will explore the cultural construct underpinning the medical system, the role of culture in the interaction between practitioner and patient, and the role of the reconnection to cultural heritage in healing.

Call Janice Barbee or Atum Azzahir at 612-721-5745 for more details.