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A Community-Based Mental Health Project
Our story, begins just a few years before 2019, with a passionate community psychologist who studied in Braamfontein (Wits). Disturbed by the collective indifference towards the struggles of those living homeless and our collective experiences of marginalization, she initiated a project designed to foster awareness and healing within the community. This was the start of The Green Bag Project.
We are a grassroots, community-based mental health project dedicated to providing communal, creative, and brave healing spaces for people living homeless and for all experiencing marginalization. Officially founded in March of 2019, our project activities have gone from simply providing green drawstring bags filled with a month-supply of toiletries (recognising the mental healthcare of simply being able to access self-hygiene tools and the social access that can afford); to now offering trauma-informed, community-centered workshops guided by the principles of Ubuntu and community-based participatory action research (CBPAR). In all our various activities, we seek to strengthen connections among individuals (and by extension, the broader community) to foster embodied resilience, social cohesion, and psycho-educative conscientization.
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Join us in our mission to foster healing and social cohesion as we collaborate to make a positive impact.
We're big on kindness, people, care, learning and healing community.
We're not big on capitalism.
Kindness & Community-based mental healthcare: We cultivate an atmosphere of compassion and care in all our actions and initiatives, while promoting mental healing within the community.
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Relationships & People First: We foster strong, relationships within the community to enhance support and healing. We honour the inherent dignity of each person, focusing their humanity rather than their circumstances.
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Trauma-informed, Care-Based Activism: We prioritize understanding and addressing the effects of trauma within our community and engage in activism centered on support and the well-being of the community.
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Ubuntu: We embrace the philosophy of interconnectedness, recognizing that our humanity is linked to one another.
Pro-Poor & Anti-capitalist: We advocate for low-income, ensuring their needs and voices are acknowledged. We seek embodied ways confront systems of inequality and promote alternative methods to support marginalized communities.
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