FEATURED SPEAKER

Rev. Vahisha Hasan, M.A., Ed.S., M.Div.

Vahisha Hasan is a faith-rooted organizer moving at the intersections of faith, social justice, and mental health. She is the Executive Director of Movement in Faith, a project of Transform Network. She is a powerful public speaker, transformative facilitator, social justice trainer, minister, and writer with a deeply prophetic voice and imagination for how faith communities can be an active part of healing and collective liberation.

She is currently the Program Director at Historic Clayborn Temple in Memphis TN, the site of the Sanitation Workers Strike in the 1960’s. Vahisha is also a core team member of TRACC4Movements (Trauma Response and Crisis Care) providing supportive tools for wellness for those who labor in freedom and liberation. She also serves as an associate minister at Christ Missionary Baptist Church, under Rev. Dr. Gina Stewart, Senior Pastor, where she was licensed and ordained June 23, 2019.

Vahisha holds a dual Master’s of Divinity and Master’s of Mental Health Counseling with an Education Specialist Certification from Gardner-Webb University and a bachelor’s degree in Communications with a concentration in Interpersonal Organization from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In addition to penning book reviews, journal articles, online publications, and writing a bachelor’s curriculum in Applied Psychology, she has curated and co-edited three editions of Resipiscence: A Lenten Devotional for Dismantling White Supremacy, 2018-2020. Her 4th book just launched, curated, and co-edited with Rev. Anne Dunlap, Building Up A New World: Congregational Organizing for Transformative Impact.

Vahisha is her best self in community and is deeply grateful for her biological, chosen, and movement family. You can find her moving to the end of her own rainbow in the US South and on IG and Twitter @vahishahasan

SPEAKING TOPICS

Move in Faith: Intersectionality in Social Change
Support communities of faith to identify their intersection in an area of social change. This intersection is where faith can be a noun and a verb. Explore how faith communities can find an active role in social justice movement where their faith aligns with an area of social change. Effective strategies toward social change will then require an awareness and analysis of the impact of power, race, class, gender, sexual orientation, age, and faith.

Implicit Bias/Racial Awareness Training
In a faith context, we will explore the ways we are conditioned towards implicit bias via environmental and unconscious and conscious brain influences. Then learn active ways to be intentional in disrupting these patterns of thought and functioning as they hold up oppressive infrastructures.

Destigmatizing/Integrating Mental Health and Wellness in Faith Communities
Faith is such an amazing gift and resource on the path to wellness and those with mental health challenges should not have to choose between their faith and their wellness. Let’s examine the unique stigma on people of faith with mental health challenges and through education expand the concept of healing and wellness in a faith setting. Equip faith communities to destigmatize mental health and integrate or further develop ministry, programming, outreach, inreach, and education in their faith settings.

Faithful Protest: Civil Disobedience Training
Should people of faith protest? What can resistance look like for a person of faith or a faith community? If your answer is yes, let’s explore how to be a positive faith presence in a protest setting. If your answer is no, let us explore how you can still be supportive by learning the many forms and roles of resistance available for those who want to move in faith.