Lakou Tanama is a strategy that focuses on culturally centered, community-based
​mental health and healing for Haitian people.​
Lakou Tanama Circles are an initiative of Fondation Espoir, co-developed in collaboration with psychologist Dr. Evan Auguste and a community of grassroots organizations in Ayiti and the diaspora. Lakou Tanama spaces are inclusive, culturally grounded, African-Indigenous healing circles designed specifically for Haitian children, adolescents, and adults experiencing acute, cultural, and intergenerational trauma. Inspired by contemporary and ancestral African and Arawak Taíno traditions, these circles create safe, courageous and empowering environments to address psychological, spiritual, social and political wounds stemming from historical and ongoing oppression. While Lakou Tanama circles are not group therapy, they do serve as a facilitated collective space where the healing process is supported by frameworks and protocols that embrace an optimal worldview. Lakou Tanama Healing Circles are inclusive spaces where all are welcome regardless of their faith, gender, race, identity or lived experience.  

What are Healing Circles?

Since time immemorial, the culture of circle has been rooted in the DNA of indigenous and maroon people. Circles create sacred spaces to remember and honor ancestral knowledge as well as address trauma, harm, conflict and activate the healing process between unlikely relations and within broken families and communities.

​Circles serve as a  p​owerful tool for personal and organizational transformation that also facilitate increased levels of group trust and integration. Circles embody our ability to “see” “hear” and “be here” as we work through profound differences and deep divides. We welcome all those willing to sit in shared humility, honesty, accountability, and compassion.