(Re)Birth Society's 2025-26
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 are currently working on a few archival projects. We've begun filming and recording interviews with elders and community members, holding their stories to be compiled into various pieces. We are also holding a community archive of narratives collected during our Hoodoo Heritage Festivals over the past three years. These records will be passed on to future generations in their search of Hoodoo.

We are working on a presentation called Sounds & Stories, which takes audiences through the sounds and stories of Black Americans from the precolonial era to the present. We hope to be able to present this production at Hoodoo Heritage Festival 2026.

In 2024 and 2025, we partnered with Brain Studios and JBambii to support the filming of the music video for JBambii's single, "Church Fan" from her sophomore project, Black American Beauty. As multi-year sponsors and supporters, we are planning further collaborations for 2026.

Free Birth 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 Check-in

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.

11A076C9-C1BD-4FF3-ADB9-E1CB2633CE6C_edi

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.

We have expanded our care package reach to include people who are pregnant, postpartum, disabled, differently abled, elderly, unhoused, or otherwise in need.

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 include:

Muva's Day Celebration - Spring 2026
For You(th) Immersions: Teen Theatre Trip - Winter 2026
Hoodoo Heritage Festival - Fall 2025
Fireside: A Hoodoo Harvest Bonfire - Fall 2025
Community Care Clinic - Fall 2025
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

2026 Key Wellness Spaces

(Re)Birth Camping Trip (September 2026)- 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 2027)- 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 2026) -The Hoodoo Heritage Month Festivities & Festival celebrate African-American cultural history and spiritual traditions, and their role in our liberation! These events include a bonfire, a care clinic, and a festival with 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 (May 2026)

MUTUAL AID

From 2023 to 2026, 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.

Over the past year we offered stipends to parents facing SNAP cuts during the federal shutdown, we prepared 100 care packages to distribute to families and individuals from Fall to Summer, we delivered groceries, diapers, and toiletries to families and to unhoused people on the South Side. We will continue to address and organize around the needs of our community members.

(Re)Birth

society

(Re)Birth Society's 2025-26 programs