Pan-African Resilience Healers Network (PARHN)

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The Pan-African Resilience Healers Network (PARHN) is a visionary initiative empowering women and families across 14 African countries who have been affected by gender-based violence, conflict, and protracted crises. At its heart are Resilience Mothers and Mentors— trusted community members who provide trauma-informed, culturally grounded support in places where psychologists are scarce. PARHN addresses immediate trauma and the historical impacts of colonization, restoring traditional healing practices while integrating evidence-based neuroscience to strengthen resilience. The program is adaptable to each community, ensuring cultural relevance and maximum impact.

• Millions of women and families experience ongoing, intergenerational trauma.
• Conventional Western therapy models can retraumatize participants, activating the nervous system rather than supporting regulation.
• Limited access to mental health services leaves communities without culturally relevant support.
• Colonial histories disrupted traditional ways of healing, eroding community knowledge and resilience practices.

• Evidence-Based, Trauma-Sensitive Talk Therapy (SNET): Utilizes Salutogenic Narrative Exposure Therapy (SNET) to enable survivors to safely tell their stories, integrating neurobiological principles to regulate the nervous system and build resilience.
• Decolonizing Healing Practices: Restores traditional ways of healing, integrating culturally grounded practices such as running, singing, and dancing to support emotional, physiological, and social resilience.
• Cultural and Communal Integration:  Resilience Mothers and Mentors work alongside traditional healers and community leaders, consulting with them before training to ensure interventions are culturally relevant.
• Community-Level Healing: Supports collective resilience, fostering environments of humor, creativity, and shared responsibility to help communities rebuild safety and agency amid ongoing crises.
• Research and Documentation: Documents outcomes, oral histories, and culturally adapted interventions to inform program refinement, scalability, and policy advocacy.

• Community-Led Healing: Trains local leaders as anchors of healing where psychologists are unavailable.
• Holistic and Culturally-Informed: Combines evidence-based neuroscience with decolonized cultural and communal healing strategies.
• Responsive & Proactive: Provides real-time, crisis-responsive interventions, not limited to post-trauma recovery.
• Scalable Model: Creates a scalable, adaptable Pan-African model that respects and integrates local practices.

• Unique Solution: Offers a culturally and scientifically informed solution to widespread trauma.
• Integrative Approach: Safely integrates SNET with Indigenous-informed, decolonized practices.
• Sustainable Impact: Strengthens community networks, social cohesion, and intergenerational wellness.
• Data-Driven: Generates research and measurable impact, supporting future scaling and policy advocacy.

Iya Affo is a visionary trauma educator, cultural wellness leader, and founder of the Pan-African Resilience Healers Network (PARHN). As a Tribal African woman and a descendant of both spiritual and physical healers, Iya's work is rooted in the global restoration of ancestral wisdom and the decolonization of healing practices. Her unique, integrative approach harmonizes Traditional African and Indigenous Medicine with evidence-based neuroscience and Western modalities to foster deep, embodied healing from trauma.

A recognized authority in her field, Iya is the creator of the world's only 48-hour, six-level Historical Trauma Specialist Certification. She also authored Arizona's Resilience & Empowerment Curriculum, which is now implemented in Maricopa County schools and Indigenous communities. As a certified Trauma Specialist, Resilience Life Coach, and adjunct professor at the Arizona Trauma Institute, she brings a robust academic and professional background to her work.

Iya's expertise is informed by a profound global pilgrimage spanning over 30 countries, where she lived and studied with Indigenous, Yoruba, Buddhist, Hindu, and Taoist communities. She has worked intimately with elders and communities across the Navajo Nation, Salt River, Gila River, and Ho-Chunk, and was invited to form the first cross-border collaboration on historical trauma between the U.S. and Canada. Her work in West Africa, studying directly with medicine men and women, provides a deep, personal understanding of the intergenerational impacts of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.

An internationally recognized speaker, Iya has delivered over 150 talks and has a documented reach of over 150,000 people, including acclaimed keynotes at the African Women's Rights Conference in Kenya and the National ACEs Conference in San Francisco. She was recently featured in the documentary *The Eternal Song*, by the producers of *The Wisdom of Trauma*, and continues to be a leading voice shaping the global discourse on collective healing and cultural equity.

• Funding: Your support will fund the training of Resilience Mothers and Mentors, program implementation, and research documentation.
• Collaboration: We will continue to collaborate with local medicine people, community leaders, and regional networks to ensure cultural relevance and effectiveness.
• Reporting: Donors will receive ongoing reporting with measurable outcomes and compelling stories of transformation, like that of a recent participant who, after training, led a community healing circle that brought together rival families.