The Blaque Awareness
Network (BAN) P.O. Box 2172 Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania
19608 Contact Us
Founder and CEO / Ellesia Ann Blaque, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Africana and Ethnic Literatures, History, and Culture
Welcome! The Blaque Awareness
Network (The Network) is an Afrocentric forum where new knowledge can be both
acquired and applied. It is a practical, inter-related cluster of programs
targeting the minority community, but made accessible to anyone willing to both
learn and teach. BAN is influenced by Pan-Africanism and Black
Nationalism, resulting in a focus on ethnic minority communities, businesses,
and social service agencies. We offer workshops, seminars, retreats, and
conferences to both members and guests for nominal fees/donations.
Although each program is geared toward a specific audience with a specific
learning outcomes, each works toward a single goal: to better the lives and
communities from which participants come. However, BAN goes much farther
than the average non-profit agency in that The Network's activities connect
people, cultures, and communities goals to one another, thereby expanding The
Network. In addition, BAN also serves as the cohesive entity for all
agencies and companies organized under the BlaqueAdemics™ banner.
The Workshops Our
workshops are designed with history in mind and offer opportunities to
learn and apply specific knowledge for the target audience. BAN has begun
building these workshops by offering what we believe are the two most important:
the Family Workshops and the Teen
Workshops.
Black Health Workshop History
tells us that African Americans, 13% of the total American population (U.S. Census 2000),
make up an overwhelming 49% of all
the HIV/AIDS population. This is a health emergency often
minimized in and by the black community. Therefore, the most important of the
three workshops on black health offered by The Network is that concerning the
level of HIV/AIDS contraction in the black community. While the workshop offers
the standard components-knowledge, diagnosis, and treatment-our participants are
further engaged using a learning module exclusive to BAN. In it the
socio-psychoanalytical concerns about the disease and how they serve as the
catalysts to the 'why' of minimization in the black community are addressed,
including homosexuality and MSMs, fear of testing results as avoidance from
testing, and the fear based social stigma suffered by those having
contracted the disease. This additional component is critical to the eradication
of HIV/AIDS in the black community, as the knowledge of HIV/AIDS is not properly
applied. The Network's HIV/AIDS workshop is designed to fill that void.
As we continue to grow, there will be workshops on Sarcoidosis, Diabetes, Heart
Attack and Stroke. To be placed on the mailing list for more information and
to express your interest in upcoming workshops, please send your contact
information and mailing address via our Comments
link. Teen Workshops
These workshops target
troubled teenagers and serve as an alternative to State programs. It is the
understanding, and therefore the practice of The Network, that parents who are
willing to turn look to the government for resolutions to problems in their
families are, without doubt, making a mistake. We must approach our circumstance
differently and access the known history, which reminds us that the same
institutions to which we turn to for temporary care, juvenile detention/prisons,
boot camps, and group homes-are not concerned with the improvement of our
families, but rather the long term capital gain earned from housing
people.
In the 1980s, prison financing changed drastically, opening up
ownership to the private sector, which resulted in profit earnings and sharing.
Since then, "the 204 new facilities built between 1995 and 2000, 154 or three
quarters were privately owned,
as prisons are now an industry,
and as such, minorities and the poor must take that knowledge and apply it to
our lifestyles. In other words, knowing that the any industry exists to generate
wealth, that wealth can only be acquired through capital gain, which requires
product generation, and African Americans, other minorities, and the poor are
the industry's product to be generated in American prisons, it would be wise to
apply that knowledge by keeping our children and young adults
out of the system.
The idea that families can solve their own
problems must be supported in order to take control of their communities, which
begins by addressing issues within the family as a family. This is particularly
important to minority and poor teens, who have traditionally been mistreated by
governmental agents and their agencies, such as police and parole officers,
juvenile judges, penal codes, systems of incarceration, group homes, and foster
homes. The Network believes that with the right guidance, families can no only
resolve their own issues, but contribute to the care of children who have been
abandoned to the system. Critical attention must be paid to the ways in which
State programs treat children when shuffled off to state institutions for
help.
The Network's teen workshops offer an alternative to such measures
and are facilitated by leaders, educators, and professionals in the local
community who not only support BAN's methodology, but who also have a stake in
the results of what we do. It is important that we assure our youth are critical
thinkers about all that they contemplate; that they can differentiate between
the images in the latest music video, which are commodifications of our
experiences, and the application of knowing the historical truth about
who they actually.
To achieve our learning and application outcomes The
Network uses history, literature, music lyrics, critical essays, poetry and
spoken word, role playing, and autobiographical presentations to share
information, gain new knowledge, and make concrete life plans-the
application of that knowledge. Our goals is to send participants home
with a practical 10 year life plan that is not only achievable, but worthy of
achievement. Most importantly, we do not preach to them, but rather demonstrae
to them the tools they need and how to apply them to reach their
respective goals.
