At The Kitchen Table

This February we are starting our 2026 Ujima Wednesdays workshop theme Together: Organizing for Financial Governance Power by discussing and rethinking our personal relationship to finance. 

Our relationships to money can range from trauma and stress to care, liberation, and agency. This shapes our lives, our relationships, and how we show up in our work, and in community spaces. Transforming our personal relationships to money can strengthen our collective economic power.

Hear from speakers Ernesto "Eroc" Arroyo-Montano of United for a Fair Economy, Vashti DuBois of The Colored Girls Museum, and Jessica Norwood of Runway Roots, as they invite us to reflect on how money has moved through our lives, and how those personal experiences connect to our shared realities. Join us at the kitchen table this month as we table-set and definition-building together.

February 4: From Economic Trauma to Body Wisdom: Naming the Wound | RSVP

Through guided reflection, conversation, and grounding practices, participants will have space to name experiences that are often privatized or silenced.

We cannot heal all trauma in two hours, nor is that the goal. This session is about opening doorways, building connections, and beginning to reconnect with body wisdom as a source of insight and care. Participants will leave with a shared language for economic trauma and a deeper sense of how their personal experiences connect to larger systems.

This is a two-part, in-person workshop series that creates space for honest conversation, collective reflection, and shared learning around money, trauma, and care. Rooted in trust and relational practice, the series invites participants to slow down, listen deeply, and engage money not only as a system, but as something we carry in our bodies and histories. While each session can stand alone, participants are encouraged to attend both workshops to experience the full arc of the series.

Both workshops will take place during the full Ujima Wednesdays time (6:30–8:30pm). These sessions are in person only and will not be recorded due to the personal nature of the material.

February 11: From Surviving to Thriving Together: Building Collective Care & Economic Power | RSVP

This workshop builds on our healing journey together. Moving from naming harm toward imagining and practicing what support can look like, we will focus on collective care, shared resources, and pathways toward economic power rooted in relationship rather than isolation. Our work here is to deepen connection, strengthen trust, and support one another in carrying this work forward, beyond today and beyond ourselves.

This is a two-part, in-person workshop series that creates space for honest conversation, collective reflection, and shared learning around money, trauma, and care. Rooted in trust and relational practice, the series invites participants to slow down, listen deeply, and engage money not only as a system, but as something we carry in our bodies and histories. While each session can stand alone, participants are encouraged to attend both workshops to experience the full arc of the series.

Both workshops will take place during the full Ujima Wednesdays time (6:30–8:30pm). Member teams will still meet. These sessions are in person only and will not be recorded due to the personal nature of the material.

February 18: How Much is Enough: Cooperatively Building | RSVP

Drawing from her nonprofit leadership, arts institutions, and grassroots community work, Vashti DuBois will guide us in a workshop exploring the difference between creating wealth and creating the experience of wealth, and why access to credit, recognition, and trust matter as much as having money. Participants are invited to consider traditional and non-traditional pathways to stability and ownership, and what it means to build wealth together without abandoning community.

February 25: Money, Shame, and Grief | RSVP

Join Jessica Norwood in a guided workshop examining how money, shame, and grief intersect in our financial lives, and how we can navigate these experiences with care.

About our facilitators:

Ernesto "Eroc" Arroyo-Montano is a proud father of three children, an emcee, circle keeper, artist, cultural organizer, educator, curandero and aspiring elder. He is a queer Boricua raised in Boston, Massachusetts, and a founding member of the radical, award-winning Hip Hop group, Foundation Movement, with whom he has been blessed to facilitate workshops and perform around the globe. 

Healing justice, arts & activism, and popular education remain Eroc’s passions, purpose and priorities in his community liberation movement work, all of which he is able to develop, practice and facilitate in his current role as UFE’s Director of Cultural Organizing. He is often a lead facilitator at UFE’s trainings and gatherings, a circle keeper for UFE- and partner group-led events, and he guides groups to address conflicts generatively.

Vashti Dubois is the founder and Executive Director of The Colored Girls Museum (TCGM) in Philadelphia, PA. With over 30 years of experience in the nonprofit sector, she is a social practice artist, creative scholar, and institution builder. TCGM is a grassroots, “place-based” memoir museum that honors the experiences of ordinary women and girls from the African Diaspora. It is the first museum of its kind, distinguished by its focus on the stories of these women and girls, its unique approach to community-curated storytelling, and its concept of treating “the museum” as both a character and a theatrical event.

The museum features art and artifacts that focus on the lives of ordinary Black women and girls, emphasizing key aspects of their stories and personal histories. The Colored Girls Museum serves as a sanctuary, research facility, exhibition space, gathering place, and think tank. It acts as a community anchor, fostering dynamic partnerships and collaborations at both local and national levels. In October 2025, The Colored Girls Museum launched the TCGM Mobile Museum. With this initiative, TCGM aims to create a national network of artists, museums, institutions, and communities that will provide safe spaces for Black girls to live, learn, and thrive. In 2026, TCGM was nominated as one of the 10 Best in USA Today's Readers' Choice. The Colored Girls Museum has also been featured in several publications, including the "Black Futures Anthology," edited by Kimberly Drew and Jenna Wortham, and "Black Women's Art Ecosystems," by Tanisha M. Jackson.

In recognition of her contributions, Vashti was honored as a 2022 inductee into the Germantown Hall of Fame and served as a Fellow at the Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts during the same year. Additionally, she was named a Philadelphia Cultural Treasures Fellow in 2023. A graduate of Wesleyan University, Dubois is currently writing a book about the creation of The Colored Girls Museum.

Vashti is a proud parent of three adult children and three grandchildren, all of whom live in Philadelphia.

Jessica Norwood (She/Her) is a financial activist, investor and social entrepreneur. Jessica founded RUNWAY because she knew that the only way to change the financial conditions for Black entrepreneurs was to begin moving money in “Right Relationship”. In order to do this, Jessica promotes the practice of Friends and Family investments, a form of pre-seed capital, or what Jessica calls "Believe in You Money " to fund Black-owned companies.

Widely recognized for her groundbreaking work in economic disruption, Jessica is a Center for Economic Democracy fellow, an immediate past fellow for RSF Social Finance Integrated Capital Fellowship, winner of the prestigious Nathan Cummings Foundation Fellowship, a former BALLE Fellow for local economies (Common Future), a lifelong Fellow of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University and Southern University College of Business for Emerging Leaders, as well as the Political Power and Social Change Fellow of the Hip Hop Archive at the Hutchins Center of Harvard University. Her innovative work has been profiled in NPR, Next City, Essence Magazine, Conscious Company, Fast Company and NY Times Best Selling author Edgar Villanova of “Decolonizing Wealth” calls her work the “medicine” modern philanthropy and investment need.

When she is not reimagining financial systems and practices, Jessica turns into a super model on the weekends with a pretty fierce Instagram page. With a love for bringing changemakers together for food and spirit-filled conversation, Jessica, is unlocking curiosity through art and play. Her favorite quote is from Mother Toni Morrison, “You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down”.