Migrating to a new country brings with it a lot of adjustment challenges and cultural gender role expectations are reshaped as women and men adapt to new life in a foreign country. Information in the public domain, highlights the disturbing prevalence of domestic violence among Africans and other immigrant communities in the diaspora. The intersection of cultural identity, family values and gender, employment opportunities, as well as the forms of marriage and violence, continue to create additional acculturation behaviors in the diaspora. Now is the time to transform domestic violence from an individual, private matter into the public domain.
Tea Ceremonies and African Women’s Round Table on Domestic Violence
AAD is part of a collaborative and partnership initiative to address persistent prevalence of domestic violence in the diaspora. Domestic violence and other topics for discussion are participatory and community-driven and are decided by the women according to real life issues they bring to the table consistent with their lived experiences in Africa and in the diaspora. These meetings offer a safe forum to discuss and define conceptual understanding of abuse and domestic violence from the women’s perspective. Women’s health, health literacy, financial literacy, economic empowerment, personal, community and family health, stress, depression and mental health, family dynamics, and changing gender roles in the diaspora are part of these conversations. Initiative embraces social determinants of health, health disparities, spiritual and emotional abuse, intersection of culture, religion and domestic violence, culture and marriages in the diaspora among African and other immigrant communities, to mention a few.
Role of AAD
In a nutshell, the tea ceremonies entail a group of African and immigrant women coming together, on a regular basis, to explore, articulate and identify issues pertinent to them about domestic violence and data/information generated will inform their course of action in resolving domestic violence related issues. Program highlights the importance of coming together to address current issues affecting Africans and other immigrant communities in the United States, sharing their lived experiences while working towards addressing them and proposing practical, realistic and sustainable solutions to address domestic violence in the diaspora.
Impact
The overarching goal is to begin to empower women by establishing a trusted forum where women can connect, establish close relationships and feel comfortable to start exploring issues affecting them including domestic violence and in the process develop sustainable communities of practice where women start to organize themselves into social networks and support systems that are non-threatening, inclusive, and diverse. While this program is intended to support victims and survivors of domestic violence, it’s being offered to prevent and reduce the prevalence of domestic violence by creating awareness and bringing this discourse into the public sphere/domain in the African and immigrant communities. Current AAD is partnering with Nerlow Afriki and its founder, Fatima Phorgho.