Come be a part of the SAYHU Community Meeting this month on Zoom. If we haven't seen you in a while, we'd love to see you! If it's your first time joining us, welcome!

- Learn about SAYHU's plans for summer (including our virtual summer institute and workshops you might want to attend)
- Get a sense of how we're running things this through this year
- Find out what we learned from the community survey
- Meet awesome new people who are part of SAYHU's community network
- Learn more about the different directions SAYHU is headed
- Tell us what you are up to this summer and how you might want to be involved
- Help us continue to build our beloved community

We would love to have you there! Please invite anyone you'd like to know more about SAYHU (and our virtual summer institute)

SAYHU supports is a series of peer-to peer conversations for community members of all ages. This first series of discussions will focus on family dynamics. We will work together to establish ground rules and open communication in a safe and confidential space.

Monthly session dates are as follows (join us for just one or as many as you like!):

May 15
June 12
July 17
August 14

The topic for May is The Pressures and Privileges of Growing Up in Patriarchy.

Community member Huda Adnan-Mitha will support this new project. Huda is a Clinical Services Intern at Project Girls and earning an MSW in the Graduate College of Social Work (GCSW) at the University of Houston, graduating this May with a clinical concentration and specialization in Health & Behavioral Health. Huda believes that our community should have accessible, professional, and culture-specific mental health providers to support empowerment and healing.

While this is not clinical support for it is an opportunity to build community and learn more about group support strategies for mental health. We can direct participants to resources for additional support.

The last 12 months (and counting) have been a time of great pain for our world. Collectively we have experienced an ongoing pandemic, racial injustices, and sociopolitical uncertainty. Within our relationships, we experienced loss, harm, and separation. Individually, we have felt isolation, othering, guilt, and a reemergence of past traumas.
While these traumas continue, our community responds with resilience. We speak out, give back, care for one another, and rediscover love for ourselves. We heal.
Join us for Brown Bodies, Bold Stories: The Ways We Heal on 4/18 at 2pm on Zoom. Share a story or hear from others – all are welcome.
Share an original story, poem, or spoken word; or read a published work that has informed your healing journey as a South Asian person. When you share your stories, you bring light to others and forge a pathway for community healing. We are strong in our vulnerability.
Submissions should be:
No more than 5 minutes
Written or via video
Anonymous submissions are welcome – we will ask someone to read it for you
Email to contact@dayahouston.org with the subject "Brown Bodies Bold Stories" by April 14th at 5pm

We are pleased to have SAYHU community members Muizz and Uliya running today's program. We hope you can join us! The Zoom info is now added on here and below.

We'll learn about how the carceral state impacts us and then write letters to our incarcerated neighbors during this time together. We will learn about abolition and how it relates to work SAYHU is doing as a collective. Join us for this very special community gathering.

To prepare for this event:
We invite you to explore this non-exhaustive list of suggested readings: https://docs.google.com/.../2PACX.../pub

We also invite you to reflect on what is bringing you to the event.

SAYHU supports is a series of peer-to peer conversations for community members of all ages. This first series of discussions will focus on family dynamics. We will work together to establish ground rules and open communication in a safe and confidential space.

Monthly session dates are as follows (join us for just one or as many as you like!):

April 10
May 15
June 12
July 17
August 14

In April, the discussion will be based on boundaries.

BOUNDARIES.
What are they? More importantly, how do you establish them? Where do you draw the lines? Are they challenging to establish? How do they protect you? Why do you establish them in the first place? How do you uphold them? We will talk about any and all intersections of South Asian families and boundaries in a safe, digital space for SAYHU community members, as well as non-community members if they wish to attend.

Community member Huda Adnan-Mitha will support this new project. Huda is a Clinical Services Intern at Project Girls and earning an MSW in the Graduate College of Social Work (GCSW) at the University of Houston, graduating this May with a clinical concentration and specialization in Health & Behavioral Health. Huda believes that our community should have accessible, professional, and culture-specific mental health providers to support empowerment and healing.

While this is not clinical support for it is an opportunity to build community and learn more about group support strategies for mental health. We can direct participants to resources for additional support.

A SAYHU support group is getting off the ground - you asked for it and we are making it happen!

SAYHU supports is a series of peer-to peer conversations for community members of all ages. This first series of discussions will focus on family dynamics. We will work together to establish ground rules and open communication in a safe and confidential space.

Monthly session dates are as follows (join us for just one or as many as you like!):

March 13
April 10
May 15
June 12
July 17
August 14

In March, the discussion will be based on mental health. Updates other discussion topics will be made available near the date of the meeting.

Some facilitation will be provided by SAYHU community member Seema Nanda. Seema is a mixed media artist. She has worked in Houston non-profit organizations as a program facilitator and art educator. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a BA in Philosophy. Seema has a strong interest in mental health issues, especially in the South Asian community.

Community member Huda Adnan-Mitha will also support this new project. Huda is a Clinical Services Intern at Project Girls and earning an MSW in the Graduate College of Social Work (GCSW) at the University of Houston, graduating this May with a clinical concentration and specialization in Health & Behavioral Health. Huda believes that our community should have accessible, professional, and culture-specific mental health providers to support empowerment and healing.

While this is not clinical support for it is an opportunity to build community and learn more about group support strategies for mental health. We can direct participants to resources for additional support.

After a wonderful conversation on MLK Jr. Day, we've decided to give everyone some more time to finish this thought-provoking book, and to come together again in March.

This time, our conversation will be happening the day before International Women's Day, so be ready to talk about gender and caste, as it emerges in this text (and in other texts! please share anything you're reading on the topic in the comments here.)

For more about the book, check out this review by Anupama Rao: https://lareviewofbooks.org/.../the-work-of-analogy-on.../

And do take some time to review the SAYHU curriculum page on Anti-Blackness, Colorism, and Caste for even more resources: https://www.sayhu.org/anti-blackness-caste-colorism

Come be part of the conversation, no matter how much of the text you've had a chance to read!

Hey hey friends! Come join SAYHU in a creative flow session led by one of our community members, song writer and producer, Uliya! They've shared their talents with us before and we're so excited to be led in an afternoon of creation with them. Bring your markers, crayons, colored pencils, paints, water colors, knitting, beading, crocheting, word-working etc! There will be a chill playlist for us to listen to, some creative prompts for those who want it, and some digital creating tools for those that need/want them.

Come as you're able and join this space we are creating for all who want it!

Interested in writing for SAYHU's Blog? Join us for a 2-hour virtual Write-A-Thon, where we will spend time working on pieces for the blog and offering support and suggestions for each other's work.

We will start with an introduction to the Blog's overall theme and discuss topics that are of interest to our community. Afterwards, we will have a chance to write (the moderators will provide an ambient virtual space with music and visuals), before finishing with a peer-editing session. All pieces that are worked on at this Write-A-Thon are open for submission to our Blog!

This event will be moderated by Jennifer and Samridhdi.

SAYHU community members have been thinking about and talking about caste. Given what we know and what we are learning about caste in our own communities, many of us have started reading Isabel Wilkerson's new book on the topic - or have been seeking accountability to do so.

We plan to start our discussion of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents this Martin Luther King Jr. Day. We continue a conversation that SAYHU is engaged and committed to in and around South Asian identity and experience and anti-Blackness, and we are seeking broad perspectives for a black and South Asian conversation about this text.

Join us for a discussion of the first sections of this book (and other related sources), as we mark this important holiday. Connect with us on this event page and share online resources related to caste, social justice, and the US history of struggle that Wilkerson explores and that MLK represents.

For more about the book, check out this review by Anupama Rao: https://lareviewofbooks.org/.../the-work-of-analogy-on.../

Come be part of the conversation, no matter how much of the text you've had a chance to read! *We'll share a Zoom link for this event on Facebook the morning of the event.