Beginning with care

Before you read further, I want to begin with something simple: 

Please take a breath.

If things have felt heavy lately, that would make sense. The world is demanding. Our work is demanding. Many of us are holding more than we say out loud.

Are you okay to read this right now? If not, that is completely fine, you can return to it later. Your emotional readiness matters. This is not symbolic language; it reflects our Do No Harm principle. We do not assume access to people’s attention, energy, or emotional capacity.

And while this letter speaks about serious issues, I also want to say that it is okay to laugh. It is okay to find joy. It is okay to dance, even in difficult times. Sustainable movements are not built on tension alone. They are sustained by community, humour, and humanity.

Introducing Our Movement

Kulna means “all of us.”

That phrase carries both aspiration and responsibility. Because historically, “all of us” has not always included everyone.

I write this not only as Lead Wellbeing Coordinator and a psychotherapist, but as an activist who is proud to belong to this community. I am shaped by it and accountable to it. Community, for me, is not a slogan. It is protection. It is learning. It is challenge. It is collective responsibility.

When Movements Replicate Harm

Movements for justice, including feminist movements, have not been immune to racism, hierarchy, and exclusion. Black and Brown women, survivors, and community leaders are often expected to carry stories, emotional labour, and cultural translation, while structural power remains unchanged.

Shefa exists because wellbeing without justice is insufficient. And justice without an anti racist feminist lens is incomplete.

From a therapeutic perspective, trauma does not exist in isolation. It is shaped by patriarchy. It is shaped by racism. It is shaped by colonial histories that still determine whose expertise is trusted, whose suffering is recognised, and whose leadership is legitimised.

From an activist perspective, we cannot separate emotional harm from structural harm.

Burnout is not simply an individual weakness. It is often a response to systemic inequity. Secondary trauma is intensified when people are working within institutions that do not fully protect or value them. Racism within movements can be as damaging as racism outside them.

Kulna represents a commitment to addressing this honestly.

Our Do No Harm approach is not only about safeguarding protocols. It is about examining power. It asks us to consider who speaks in our spaces, who is interrupted, who carries invisible labour, and who feels safe enough to disagree. It asks us to ensure that consent, dignity, and emotional safety are not optional extras but built into how we design programmes and partnerships.

An anti racist feminist lens requires structural change. It requires redistributing voice, resources, and decision making power. It requires us to be consistent in our values.

We cannot defend women and girls while ignoring other forms of oppression. We cannot speak about bodily autonomy selectively. Basic human rights are not conditional. If we believe in dignity and freedom from violence, we must uphold those principles across contexts, even when it is uncomfortable.

Wellbeing is inseparable from that moral consistency.

If a survivor is invited to speak without adequate emotional support, that is harm.If staff of colour are expected to absorb community trauma without supervision or care, that is harm.If leadership spaces reproduce colonial hierarchies while claiming liberation, that is harm.

What Shefa is About

Shefa focuses on strengthening the emotional infrastructure of our work. It equips teams with practical tools to understand stress responses, manage secondary trauma, and embed consent and accountability into practice. It also encourages critical reflection on the systems that create harm in the first place.

This is feminist work.It is anti racist work.It is decolonial work.It is human rights work.

Kulna is not an additional layer to our programmes. It is foundational. If we want sustainable change, we must build movements that are psychologically informed, ethically grounded, and politically consistent.

As Lead Wellbeing Coordinator, my commitment is to ensure that Shefa remains survivor centred, culturally grounded, and rigorous in its ethics. I am also committed to ensuring that our wellbeing work does not dilute difficult conversations about racism, patriarchy, or power. Care must not become a way to avoid accountability. It must strengthen it.

Care as a Political Commitment

Most importantly, this work is collective.

Community is not decorative. It is what allows us to endure. It is what allows us to correct one another. It is what allows us to grow. None of us can carry this work alone, and none of us should have to.

If liberation is our goal, then care must be central to how we pursue it.

Kulna is our commitment to ensuring that care belongs to all of us.

Dr. Leyla Hussein

Lead Wellbeing Coordinator, Shefa