The Village Family Assistance Fund.
“It takes a village to raise a child,” is an African proverb that has been proven time after time: a Village, a strong social and economic network of support, is essential to Black communities’ culture, identity, and well-being.
The violent societal assault crafted to weaken the strength and brilliance of Blackness by stigmatizing the Black community with false narratives has caused Black families to suffer silently and become isolated by violent, race and fear fueled policies.
​
As ELV wraps around each ELV Boy individually with the ultimate goal of redeveloping the 'village' through culturally relative learning opportunities, the Village Family Assistance Fund wraps around each ELV family as a whole. In 2021 we are proposing The Village Family Assistance Fund as an expansion of Eversley Little Village.
The family of each ELV boy will be enrolled in the Village program, which includes: participation in Afro-centric community education that weaves a new social and community identity, self-sufficiency programming, and sets aside funds for each family to address their immediate and future needs for food security, housing security, mental/physical health, and other restricted needs - empowering social and economic self-reliance.
ELV and the Fund support the pedagogical theory that healthy and supported families produce healthy, supported students; these programs work together to stabilize home life and create an inclusive economy.
Our Youth &
Their Safety.
Culturally Relative Trauma Related & Whole Child Community Care Policy Recommendations
Institutions and systems disproportionately oppress Black and Brown communities across our country, and Forsyth County is no exception. Trauma caused by institutions and systems not only produces disparities in the lives of many of our youth and their families, but this same institutional trauma has the potential to drastically impact a child’s life and, in the worst of cases, end a child’s life; Tamir Rice (2014) Michael Brown (2014).
Instead of joining the effort to return to the status quo during this time of a shifting paradigm, Action4Equity calls on school, city, and county leadership to ACT NOW to adequately address the status quo which prevents real and meaningful systemic change to take place in Winston-Salem Forsyth County.