Casa is launching the first, womyn’s alternative health and wellness organizing cooperative--ACHE' (Alternative Cooperative for Healing & Empowerment) for young and adult womyn of color. Inspired by the organizing and movement building for autonomy by the womyn of the Zapatista community in Mexico, we are creating our model for a sustainable community and accessible healthcare for its womyn, activists and organizers. The cooperative will support health and wellness needs related to womyn’s experiences of abuse and neglect, while being a respite to heal from internalized oppression. ACHE' will embody spirituality, culture and human rights. ACHE’ is an organizing cooperative serving as a network aiming to: 1. Connect community young and adult womyn who are looking for low/free alternative health care to health practitioners 2. Create a model for a healthy sustainable community and accessible healthcare for its womyn, activists and organizers. 3. Counters existing models of health institutions & address the serious healthcare problem in our community, where womyn are not clients or patients, but active participants in their well being. A safe space for womyn of color, youth, immigrants, low-income & the queer community to obtain access to culturally sensitive alternative health services that will reduce the rate of dis--eases.

Casa wants to take the opportunity of creating a workshop for the USSF that will share our model for sustainable & autonomous communities to create cooperatives, institutions & collectives in their communities that will holistically support their needs.. Workshop Name: Building Bridges with ACHE/Power! Members from Casa Atabex Ache' , & Estacion Libre, will come together to present a three hour interactive, experiential based workshop that will use Pablo Friere, Marxist and liberation theology as a framework. We will break the workshop into four parts that include……

Part one: We will talk about how cooperatives worked a century ago or more to honor the ancestry of liberation and autonomous movements (from Chiapas, Venzuela, Argentina etc )

Part two: W e will show a films/and articles relating to the cooperatives in EZ territory and Venezuela, Canada, etc. We will do a brief overview that addresses the current political & historical situation which has created the political response of autonomous cooperatives. Using a guided meditation we will support participants in dialoguing about the strengths and challenges of cooperatives, circles, organizations etc they have participated in and talk about their strength and challenges.

Part three: Using Casa’s emotional release model we will support participants in self healing ---- breaking the group up we will provide a safe space for organizers and USSF participants to heal from trauma, oppression neglect and abuses that they have experienced which have led them to create their own organizations, groups, cooperatives, circles, collectives etc and become artist , activist, organizers for social change

Part Four –Using the tree of oppression exercise from Pablo Friere and some art as healing exercises we will share Casa’s model of organizing nad healing & vision of ACHE and create strategies to work together Initiating conversation about how creating our own institutions can be a part of a revolutionary strategy for community sustainability.

Participants that attend this workshop will be able to share resources and practices, become active participants in their lives reclaiming their health and wellness as we are declaring our human right to create liberated institutions/cooperatives that address holistically our health needs as people of color within a cultural and spiritual context. Organize their communities to think outside the box and create a support network to create the world we want to live in today. In addition, participants will also be able to identify the contradictions in institutions that are meant for the greater good of our communities but in essence are racist, xenophobic, Trans phobic, homophobic, classist, sexist as well as have an understanding of the Casas intersectional model that take into account the multiple, concurrent forms of oppression experienced by people of color in our society & the multi-layered strategies that must be employed to support their well being. Casa defines health with in a social justice & human rights framework that includes the impact of state violence, economic violence, racial profiling, police brutality, immigrant violence, globalization, militarism, violence against our reproductive rights, queer violence, community violence, family violence, relationship violence & partner abuse & their interrelatedness as they impact our lives.

What is the biggest challenge/adversary your movement/organization faces?
The challenging part of doing this work to create alternative sustainable community is that we live in a world of capitalism, patriachy and white supremacy that effects the core of our work and who we are as communities of color. Its puts us in a position where we are seen as adviersaries, we experience limited funding, violence against womyn, challenge from the medical establishment and community based organizations. this puts us in a space to either always be fighting or sidestep it by creating our own and working from a space of care, concern while creating the world we want to live in because people are acting from a place of fear and capitalism.