Ujima, Inc.

Launched in 2016, Ujima, Inc.: The National Center on Violence Against Women in the Black Community serves as a national, culturally-specific services issue resource center to provide support to and be a voice for the Black Community in response to domestic, sexual and community violence. Ujima was founded in response to a need for an active approach to ending domestic, sexual and community violence in the Black community.

The name Ujima was derived from the third principle of Kwanzaa, and means Collective Work and Responsibility. As an organization, we understand the need to mobilize and heal our communities from the inside out. We utilize this principle to empower service providers, policy makers, advocates and the community-at-large to address the unique challenges faced by the Black Community as it relates to violence across a broad spectrum.

How We Define Black Culture

The Black community is comprised of a diverse set of people representing wide-ranging backgrounds and cultural expressions. It is with this understanding that we seek to be inclusive of all members of the African diaspora.

We define the Black community to include the following four subgroups:

African-Americans

Africans and African Immigrants

Afro-Caribbeans

Afro-Latinos/as.

The identification of these subgroups is meant to serve as a starting place and not as a way to limit the broad breadth and expansive diversity of the diaspora.