To end the climate emergency, we must understand how much colonisation and racism have impacted Africa. The impact includes separation, division, and disconnection. It includes poverty, weak and marginalized Communities, poor and compromised leadership, food crises, deforestation, and migration.

Africa and her people have been made extremely vulnerable to the effects of climate change because of colonisation and racism.However, it is possible to heal from this trauma and strengthen the resolve to combat and end the emergency.

In this workshop, Africans share how they have personally experienced racism and colonialism as well as their resolve, commitment, courage, and hope.

At intervals, participants meet in small groups of two or more people and take turns listening to each others’ stories. They are encouraged to express their emotions from having been hurt by colonisation, racism, and the climate emergency and its effects.

We use the tools of Re-evaluation Counseling to free ourselves from the harm done by oppression and from other hurts that interfere with our functioning and separate us from one another and from the world around us. Our experience is that people can heal from hurtful experiences if someone listens to us attentively and allows and encourages us to release the grief, fear, and other painful emotions.

In Sustaining All Life we provide ongoing mutual support that enables people to listen deeply to one another and heal.

Our goals include:

• Increasing our awareness of damage caused by racism, colonisation, and climate change.
• Freeing us from oppression and other hurts that limit us, turn us against each other, and make us compete for resources
• Supporting each other to organize to preserve and restore the environment