(Re)Birth
society
(Re)Birth Society's 2025
programs
Check out the plans, projects, and programs that we have in progress this year! We are welcoming collaborators, sponsors, vendors, partners, and attendees! If any of these projects interest you, please reach out using the links under each project. You can also reach us at therebirthsociety@gmail.com.
Media & Publications
We aim to improve the quality & accuracy of modern depictions of African-Indigenous experiences of the past, present, and future. We intend to share the lived and imagined experiences of our community in a way that educates and empowers us.
We began filming for our docu-series in 2023. It is focused on Black Experiences from the lens of African American and African-Indigenous folks. We are still welcoming people and families who are interested in joining us by sharing their stories authentically. Our purpose is to vibrantly show the experiences of of families and people within our community as they navigate birth, joy, pain, pleasure, death, and (re)birth. We are also seeking BirthKeepers, mental health, and wellness practitioners to share the work they're doing.
We also have some short films & video productions on the way! Fill out this form if you would like to be a part of the experience.
Free DOula Care Program
This past year we expanded our free full-spectrum support programs to help ensure that birthing people and families with financial barriers have access to doula care and birth support. These programs also provide paid employment opportunities for doulas, and provide experiential learning opportunities for doulas-in-training. Our free programs are offered virtually and in-person. They include:
-
Birth Planning
-
Labor Preparation
-
Postpartum Planning
-
Postpartum Check-ins
-
Abortion and Loss Support:
Food Security &
Agricultural
Freedom Initiative
We advocate for the right to locally, organically, and sustainably grown food and aim to make it accessible to African-Indigenous communities. We also know that agriculture is central to any self-sustained community. We received our first $10,000 grant from the National Black Food & Justice Alliance to fund our FSAF Initiative. We are stewarding and installing urban community gardening systems with which we (1) grow & distribute food, (2) educate the people, (3) collect data to duplicate & expand project across the Chicagoland area and in Huntsville, AL Currently we steward garden plots at Brickyard Community Garden and Kumunda Community Garden in the Woodlawn community of South Side Chicago. If you'd like to collaborate with us, fill out this form! Peep our event page for gardening and farmers market link ups!
(Re)Birth Academy
(Re)Birth Academy is our intergenerational, multicurricular learning center. Our network supports and connects families, educators, learning cooperatives, and community education programs both online and in-person, primarily offering resources, events and courses.
In the past year our education efforts have been focused on developing a learning program that can be offered to public, private and home schools. We created an education program centered around Life Cycles.
Our Life Cycles Youth Gardening program takes a practical, interactive approach to teaching youth about land and community stewardship. Learners work hands-on with soil-based and hydroponic gardens, and natural environments as they learn beginner concepts of gardening, botany, herbology, and ecology relevant to plant, animal and human reproduction and regeneration. This program is meant to engage learners with different life forms and offer them a gentle segue into understanding procreation and cultivation of different life forms.
In each 4-week cohort, learners engage with plant parts, processes and ecosystems, using our community garden for field study, while learning the medicinal, cultural and culinary uses of plants we grow and forage.
Our virtual library, which is composed of scholarly articles, books, and media, is a resource for new and aspiring birth workers to gain an evidence-based understanding of the current birth world & what it needs from activists and advocates. We are expanding the library beyond birth work this year. Email us at therebirthsociety@gmail.com for access.
We hope to partner with educators of various fields of study to provide more essential trainings, teachings and tools that will help uplift our community! If you are an educator looking to offer classes, trainings, or discussions, please email us at therebirthsociety@gmail.com!
link ups
We currently offer in-person ongoing family-friendly events called Link Ups During these gatherings, families are invited to join us in exploring, learning and playing. We have visited museums, hosted hikes, met at parks, dined at cultural restaurants, curated creative spaces and partnered with other organizations to offer our youth a rich environment of creative expression, fun, and scholarship.
For 2025, we have a series of community building events that will roll out through an initiative we call “Link Up.” Throughout the summer and fall we will be inviting families and people of all ages to “Link Up” with us and each other at different locations around the city, that are easy to access, affordable, and that we would consider “light-weight” in terms of planning and expense. We know that play, exploration, connection and being in nature can improve our quality of life, and we want to help normalize these activities within the BIPOC & ALANA communities.
Would you like to collaborate with us on future events? Are you interested in partnerships, sponsorships and vendor opportunities? If so, fill out this form!
Check out our upcoming events on our Link Up! page.
tOTAL WELLNESS INITIATIVE:
communal gatherings & healing spaces
In 2023 we curated wellness events and spaces where our community members could gather and take part in affordable holistic healing services, workshops, ceremonies and experiences. Our goal has been to support the mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health of people in our community.
A few of our key wellness spaces this past year included:
-
Garden Greens Giveaway Pop Up - Spring 2025
-
Community Care Clinic - Fall 2024
-
Hoodoo Heritage Month Festival - Fall 2024
-
A Little Juju Book Release Celebration - Fall 2024
-
Plant Walk & Herbalism Workshop - Fall 2024
-
“Hey Mama” Support Circle - May 2023; November 2023
-
Hoodoo Heritage Month Fest - October 2023
-
Lake Katherine Link Up - October 2023
-
Little River Canyon Hike - June 2023
-
NGVP Ubuntu Collective Retreat - February 2024
-
International Women’s Day Dinner - March 2024
-
Color Theory Dinner Circle - April 2024
-
Garden Girlies Link Ups - Spring/Summer 2024
2025 Key Wellness Spaces
-
(Re)Birth Camping Trip (September 2025)- our 3-day, 2-night nature-immersive camping trip to Nature's Garden for Victory & Peace in Tuskegee, AL for their Healing Arts in Nature Festival!
-
Cultural Healing Arts Festival (June 2026)- CHA Fest is a full-day cultural celebration that showcases healers, artists and creatives whose work contributes to the healing & empowerment of our collective communities. This outdoor event features live performances, yoga, wellness vendors, arts and crafts, food, interactive workshops, and a community kickball game.
-
Hoodoo Heritage Month Festivities (October 2025) -The Hoodoo Heritage Month Festivities & Festival celebrates African-American cultural history and spiritual traditions, and their role in our liberation! This event features wellness vendors, arts and crafts, musical performances, interactive workshops and an open mic. We strongly support the reclamation and restoration of African-Indigenous spiritual traditions and religions, which we believe can help provide healing and empowerment to our community. We aim to make this an annual celebratory event.
-
(Re)Birth Beach Day (August 2025)
-
Lake Katherine Plant Walk & Kayaking Day (September 2025)
bIRTH BASKETS & family SHOWERS
This past year, we began donating Free Birth Baskets to Chicago families, prioritizing families on the city’s south side. A part of our Reproductive Justice praxis is ensuring that people are able to live and be in environments that support having children and raising families. We support such environments by providing families w/ necessities and care items such as diapers, baby clothes, first aid kits, feeding supplies, wellness tools, and body care essentials.
So far in 2024, we have supplied 10 families with these baskets, and have donated baskets to the Chicago South Side Birth Center to be distributed to families in their care network. We aim to distribute 50 this year!
The birth basket program was initiated as a segue into our long awaited Southside Community Baby Shower launch. When faced with the barrier of having no suitable or affordable location to house our baby showers last year, we came up with the idea to bring the showering directly to each family through the birth baskets. Thanks to a community partnership, we officially have a physical location to host our Community Baby Showers. The first one will take place in November 2024.
We are accepting donations for birth baskets and community baby showers. Donations can be sent to Cash App: $RebirthSociety or Zelle therebirthsociety@gmail.com. Please input "birth baskets" or "community baby showers" in the notes/for section.
MUTUAL AID
From 2023 to 2025, we aim to provide mutual aid relief to pregnant, disabled, elderly, incarcerated, and financially-challenged people in our community. We have two categories for our mutual aid efforts: Monetary & Service-Based. Monetary mutual aid requires us to crowdfund and allocate a portion of our grant funding. Service-based mutual aid requires us to organize volunteers to perform services for people in need. Services include but aren’t limited to grocery pick ups, ride shares, and childcare assistance.