Courtesy of Chandra A. Roxanne

Community Healing Network, a New Haven-based nonprofit dedicated to the “emotional emancipation” of Black people worldwide, is entering a new chapter with Chandra Roxanne as its executive director.

Roxanne was inspired to join the Community Healing Network, or CHN, in 2019 after taking a year-long sabbatical in Europe. After visiting an interactive art exhibit in Westville upon her return to the United States, called “The Rise and Fall of the N Word,” she was forced to grapple with her time in Europe through daily conversations with the exhibit psychologist. 

“I came back from Europe really understanding that, even though I was moving through the world as a human being, as Chandra, other people were responding to me as a Black person — and their interpretation of what that meant was not always good,” Roxanne said.

Founded in 2006, CHN began as a grassroots movement in Black churches and community organizations. Nearly two decades later, it has developed international partnerships with African countries, leading efforts for racial healing and emotional reparations, according to its website.

The organization specializes in Emotional Emancipation Circles, or EECs, an eight-week program in which a trained facilitator, usually a Black psychologist or someone with prior experience with the program, works with groups of 10–20 people on what they call the “seven keys of emotional emancipation.” 

The seven keys, each of which come with its own mantra and are the focus of one week in the program, include African Spiritual Origins, Historical Moments and Movements, and Human Development and Learning.

Roxanne told the News that the goal of the EECs is to shift the mentality of members in the Black community.

“When you have undergone constant attack and trauma, you develop a mentality yourself, and that can play out in so many different ways,” Roxanne said. “So one of the things that we want to do is, first of all, is we want to create … people who are emotionally strong and can navigate and have the tools, the resilience tools to literally regulate their own systems.”

Roxanne said that CHN is looking to turn the eight-week program into a quarterly system where members return to the program, likening it to therapy. 

Together, CHN and The Association of Black Psychologists have trained facilitators and laid the foundation for EECs in nearly 50 cities in the United States.

“What we focus on is less about what is done to us, and more about what we do to each other as a result of our historical context and our current context,” Roxanne said. “It really is about how we begin healing from the legacies of anti-Blackness and the legacies of enslavement.”

The CHN also takes on another mission: connecting Black people across the diaspora, as well as across gender and generational gaps. 

Roxanne cited their work with leading NGOs across the world, including the International Civil Society Working Group for the United Nations Permanent Forum of People of African Descent, and the Global Circle for Reparations and Healing. 

“The organization has always, always looked to do its work globally,” said Roxanne. 

Melanie Funchess, an EEC facilitator, first heard about EECs in 2014. She joined CHN in 2019, focusing on programing and training expansion in Rochester, New York.

For Funchess, their work towards emotional peace is needed now more than ever. 

“Particularly we’re finding that, in the last several months, people are in need of spaces like this to reaffirm themselves, to feel safety,” said Funchess. 

She has also helped to create more specialized circles, which include groups for young adults and men, called “Something for the Brothers.”

Funchess spoke of the historical importance of group discussions like EECs for the Black community, which have existed in some shape or form for a long time.

“Even in the beginnings of our history, coming together in circles has been the way that we have settled conflict,” she said. “It’s been the way that we appeal, the way that we share joy and love.”

Funchess aims to normalize the idea of EECs so that community leaders can bring the program to their own communities and neighborhoods without requiring the presence of CHN.

Reverend William Mathis, a lecturer at Yale Divinity School and a member of the board at CHN, first began to work with the organization through his program Beloved Community, which brings together Black professionals in New Haven.

At Beloved Community meetings, members began doing EECs, which Mathis said had a profound impact on him. He felt so inspired he spread the program to his church. 

“It became such a healing agent for me, my engagement in the world,” Mathis said. 

Mathis said that channeling the framework of EECs encouraged him to find purpose and power from within himself and the community, not from predominantly white institutions. He underscored the importance of safe, all-Black spaces for open conversation and healing. 

“Our value stems not from how other people see us or what other people do to support us. It comes from within,” Mathis said.

CHN founder and President emeritus Enola G. Aird is a graduate of Yale Law School, class of 1979.