"Don't liberate us, we'll take care of it"
-MWASI Afrofeminist Collective
We envision an educational and cooperative environment where Black women & men can reconnect with each other, themselves, and the earth
Education
Students of the Women & men’s Afro Tourism Center agro-economist training programs will learn and become teachers through conceptual and experiential workshops how to build 100% natural, living agricultural systems, drawing from the wisdom of Black and Afro-indigenous practices of biodynamic farming, community-centered service, and creative entrepreneurship. New students in later seasons will receive teachings from earlier students from the W&MATC and have the opportunity to learn from members of their community.
Building resilient, healthy, and sustainable communities begins with educating mothers & fathers, who hold the vital role of birthing and raising a new generation of loving, wise, and justice-informed leaders. From there, we need to remember our lineage as children of the Earth, our original mother who nurtures us, feeds and shelters us, and provides us with a beautiful and astounding place to live our lives. A patriarchal society has ransacked her generous gifts and sought to hoard them amongst the few. We will need to return to the perspective of matriarchy, which values a nurturing, reciprocal, and attentive way of life, to restore a living balance with our home on earth and each other.
Cooperation
We believe that relationship is our most powerful tool when it comes to building lasting and compelling spaces for Black excellence to thrive. Outdoor activities such as planting, transplanting, tending, and harvesting would provide the forums for empowerment and community building that express the Women & Men’s Afro-Tourism Center’s mission. We will engage our own bodies in the work of digging, seed bed creation, crop rotation, planting and transplanting. We will then bring the fruits of our labor to the community through an ethnically diverse produce market and fill a niche in the local produce selection that provides cultural food for the afro-descended community and the culinarily curious of Harrisonburg.
Through this shared labor, we will create structures for our women & men’s collective to support and encourage each other, to listen to each other through circle process and trauma awareness training, and to share a sense of joy through African drumming circles, community meals and gatherings, and creative crafts that can support Black Women & men-owned businesses.
Stewardship
The YJW&MAC seeks to restore black women & men’s connection to being land stewards. Grounded in the belief that tending to the land can be a restorative and emancipatory practice, the Women & Men’s Afro Tourism Center will cultivate practices around re-friending our bodies, minds, and spirits through an Afro-Feminist approach to cultivating the land. This approach follows a culturally diverse and ethnic orientation to farming. Rooted in the cultural knowledge of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the perspectives of the Black diaspora, the Young Jupiter Afro Tourism Center will engage Black female & male leaders in demonstrating how farming led by women & men can be a way of bridging social, economic and environmental gaps we find in our communities.