Focus Areas

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Affordable decent housing is a prerequisite for stability and ending homelessness. People become homeless for a number of reasons. At the top of the list are systems of inequality and oppression which include language we use to refer to people who are homeless. Our discourse influences public perceptions, which in turn influence policy. Click below to read an article on "language re-framing" (Palmer, 2018). 

Any form of inequality has the potential to compromise and diminish the quality of individual and community life. There is likely a multiplier effect at work; as the level of inequality widens and as more factors in a person's life are informed by the experience of inequality and inequity, the greater the impact on a diminished quality of life (Chapman & West-Burnham, 2010). The answer in part is to "change school culture including higher-education institutions...

 We seek solutions where the term "wellness" focuses on findings ways to support the resilience and strengths already present in African American communities; We embrace a healing-centered engagement model that addresses the issues that create communal trauma. We seek to clear and hold space for community dialogues that discuss the experiences and ongoing cumulative effects of race-based trauma and racism.

African Americans are 75% more likely than others to live near facilities that produce hazardous waste (Vallarosa, 2020). We are quickly waking up to this societal scourge and must add it to the areas that CWI is focusing on. The stories of not just individuals but whole families who have succumbed to the negative impact of pollution and toxic waste is undeniable. In 2018 the EPA reported the results of a study examining facilities emitting air pollution and this impact. Click the link below to read more...