This is an episode and topic that is very important and near and dear to us. We finally get to sit down with the amazing Benny who is a founding member of Da'aro Youth Project which is a UK based community-led youth project supporting young asylum-seekers and refugees from the Horn of Africa. This is an important conversation that we need to be having more often as a community, about the realities of the refugee and migrant communities and the direct impact of migration and displacement on their mental health. 

---

In this episode we talk about:

- The genesis of Da'aro youth as a community organisation.

- The reality for newly arrived migrants in the UK.

- How does mental health affect young asylum seekers?

- The story of Alex, a young asylum seeker that committed suicide in 2017

- How the more established diaspora community can support newly arrived migrants.

- How can people get involved with this community work?

---

Get in involved with Da'aro Youth and support the project:  

Website -  Daaroyouth.org.uk 

Donate  - Support the program

IG - @daaroyouth

Volunteer - Click here

Twitter - @daaroyouth

Article - The story of Alexander Tekle, Osman Hamed Nur, Filmon Yemane, Mulubrhane Medhane Kfleyosus

---

Help us grow this podcast by word of mouth so please send this episode to your sister, friend, aunt, brother, your partner…..Let’s grown in wellness as a community.

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE, REVIEW AND RATE THE PODCAST.

Follow us on IG and send questions via DM.

INSTAGRAM  @eriwellbeing

NEWSLETTER  Sign up here

---

The Eriwellbeing podcast is a mental health and wellbeing podcast, healing black and brown communities through open and honest conversations about our mental health.

Hosted by Ruthie Zerai and Mikal Woldu.

Produced by Ruthie Zerai, Mikal Woldu and @purecreationmedia edited by Emmy K

---

Disclaimer:

While we hope you love listening to and learning from the podcast, please note this is not a substitute for seeking professional help from licensed mental health professionals. Ruthie and Miki are not Mental health professionals, we are holding this space as community builders. We encourage you to seek professional help in your local area for any mental health concerns that you may be experiencing.

In today's episode, we are joined by Mental Health Personal Trainer (PT) Fiyory Ghezae. We learn more about what it means to work as a Mental Health PT and the importance of physical activity.

---

In this episode we talk about:

- What is a Mental health Personal Trainer?

- Fiyory's experience with Mental health.

- The importance of physical activity in general and particularly for our community.

- Tips for encouraging your parents to incorporate more exercise and movement.

- How to start seeing physical activity as something positive and how to make it more fun.

---

Get in touch with Fiyory and follow her work:

Instagram @pt_fiyory

FREE physical activity booklet - Download here

Linktree to all of Fiyory's offerings - Click here

---

Help us grow this podcast by word of mouth so please send this episode to your sister, friend, aunt, brother, your partner…..Let’s grown in wellness as a community.

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE, REVIEW AND RATE THE PODCAST.

Follow us on IG and send questions via DM.

INSTAGRAM  @eriwellbeing

NEWSLETTER  Sign up here

---

The Eriwellbeing podcast is a mental health and wellbeing podcast, healing black and brown communities through open and honest conversations about our mental health.

Hosted by Ruthie Zerai and Mikal Woldu.

Produced by  Ruthie Zerai, Mikal Woldu and @purecreationmedia, edited by Emmy K.

---

Disclaimer:

While we hope you love listening to and learning from the podcast, please note this is not a substitute for seeking professional help from licensed mental health professionals. Ruthie and Miki are not Mental health professionals, we are holding this space as community builders. We encourage you to seek professional help in your local area for any mental health concerns that you may be experiencing.

Part 2 of the Culture of Healing conversation with Bethlehem Bekele, Founder of Kinetbet which is a platform dedicated to shifting culture for the better through the lens of healing.

---

In this episode we talk about:

- The importance of healing for black and brown communities 

- How we can start creating a culture of healing

- Practical ways that we start healing as a community

- The importance of community vs individual healing

---

Get in touch with Bethlehem and follow her work:

Instagram - @Kinetbet

Clubhouse - @bethlehembekele

Website - Kinetbet.com

Gratitude and Mindfulness Journal in Amharic - Journal

---

Help us grow this podcast by word of mouth so please send this episode to your sister, friend, aunt, brother, your partner…..Let’s grown in wellness as a community.

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE, REVIEW AND RATE THE PODCAST.

Follow us on IG and send questions via DM.

INSTAGRAM @eriwellbeing

NEWSLETTER  Sign up here

---

The Eriwellbeing podcast is a mental health and wellbeing podcast, healing black and brown communities through open and honest conversations about our mental health.

Hosted by Ruthie Zerai and Mikal Woldu.

Produced by Ruthie Zerai, Mikal Woldu and @purecreationmedia edited by Emmy K

---

Disclaimer:

While we hope you love listening to and learning from the podcast, please note this is not a substitute for seeking professional help from licensed mental health professionals. Ruthie and Miki are not Mental health professionals, we are holding this space as community builders. We encourage you to seek professional help in your local area for any mental health concerns that you may be experiencing.

Part 1 of the Culture of Healing conversation with Bethlehem Bekele, Founder of Kinetbet which is a platform dedicated to shifting culture for the better through the lens of healing.

---

In this episode we talk about:

- The importance of healing for black and brown communities

- How we can start creating a culture of healing

- Practical ways that we start healing as a community

- The importance of community vs individual healing

---

Get in touch with Bethlehem and follow her work:

Instagram - @Kinetbet

Clubhouse - @bethlehembekele

Website - Kinetbet.com

Gratitude and Mindfulness Journal in Amharic - Journal

---

Help us grow this podcast by word of mouth so please send this episode to your sister, friend, aunt, brother, your partner…..Let’s grown in wellness as a community.

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE, REVIEW AND RATE THE PODCAST.

Follow us on IG and send questions via DM.

INSTAGRAM @eriwellbeing

NEWSLETTER  Sign up here

---

The Eriwellbeing podcast is a mental health and wellbeing podcast, healing black and brown communities through open and honest conversations about our mental health.

Hosted by Ruthie Zerai and Mikal Woldu.

Produced by  Ruthie Zerai, Mikal Woldu and @purecreationmedia edited by Emmy K

---

Disclaimer:

While we hope you love listening to and learning from the podcast, please note this is not a substitute for seeking professional help from licensed mental health professionals. Ruthie and Miki are not Mental health professionals, we are holding this space as community builders. We encourage you to seek professional help in your local area for any mental health concerns that you may be experiencing.

The EWB podcast is back after a summer hiatus with a brand new episode. This episode features a special guest, Winta Desta, a Canadian - Eritrean physiotherapist. Winta shares from her experience and expertise as a practitioner in physiotherapy and sports. We also get insight into Winta's community engagement through her own platform MayeHealth which provides health education for Eritreans in both English and Tigrinya. If you're looking to expand your definition of wellbeing, inspiration to move your body more or if you deal with a lot of physical pain that might affect your wellbeing then this episode is for you.

In this episode we talk about:

- Wellbeing and movement/exercise as a lifestyle

- What is physiotherapy?

- Living with chronic physical pain

- The connection between chronic pain and mental health

- Community care for us by us: MayeHealth

---

Get in touch with Winta and follow her work:

Instagram @mayehealth

Website MayeHealth.com

---

Help us grow this podcast by word of mouth so please send this episode to your sister, friend, aunt, brother, your partner…..Let’s grown in wellness as a community.

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE, REVIEW AND RATE THE PODCAST.

Follow us on IG and send questions via DM.

INSTAGRAM  @eriwellbeing

NEWSLETTER  Sign up here

---

The Eriwellbeing podcast is a mental health and wellbeing podcast, healing black and brown communities through open and honest conversations about our mental health.

Hosted by Ruthie Zerai and Mikal Woldu.

Produced by  Ruthie Zerai, Mikal Woldu and @purecreationmedia, edited by Emmy K.

---

Disclaimer:

While we hope you love listening to and learning from the podcast, please note this is not a substitute for seeking professional help from licensed mental health professionals. Ruthie and Miki are not Mental health professionals, we are holding this space as community builders. We encourage you to seek professional help in your local area for any mental health concerns that you may be experiencing.

Hey EWB Fam,

Tune in to this short episode to find out how you can support the mission of Eriwellbeing to grow and reach more people in our community.

Crowdfunding campaign: 

LINK: www.gofundme.com/f/support-the-work-of-eriwellbeing

You can also access the link via our Instagram bio.

Thank you for listening and if you find our mission and content valuable please do join in and support us and share this campaign with a friend.

We appreciate you so much!

Team EWB

------

Eriwellbeing is a non-partisan and non-religious community-based platform co-founded by Mikal and Ruthie in 2018 to fight the stigma around mental health that exists within the global Eritrean diaspora. The need to create an initiative such as Eriwellbeing became apparent in the summer of 2018, where as a community we witnessed the devastating effects that poor mental health coupled with a culture of silence had on members of the community across generations.

What started off as a campaign to raise awareness around mental health ended up becoming a community platform, and a safe space for us all to have those difficult conversations around our mental health. You can check out our work by following our IG page, listening to our podcast The Eriwellbeing Podcast available on all major platforms and by signing up to our monthly newsletter.

Along our journey, the support and positive feedback we’ve received time and time again from our community has been incredible and it has kept us motivated to continue this work! We have collaborated with some amazing members of our community who were so generous to share their mental health journey with us! And collaborated with like minded organisations and mental health professionals to push the conversation forward.

Today we’re here to ask you to support us by donating to our crowdfunding and by sharing our campaign with your friends, family and network. The money raised would help us cover the costs for our digital tools, hosting services, new equipment for our podcast and the podcast production costs for the year.

We do this work, and will continue to do this work from a place of love for our community and a commitment to empower all of you to take ownership over your wellbeing. Every donation counts and it would help us ensure that the quality of our work continues to be high.

We want to thank you for your continuous support and we’re excited to continue to normalize the mental health conversation in our community with you all!

Stay well,

The Eriwellbeing team

In this episode, we talk to The EastWesterner about a very important and much-needed topic for our community; the connection between Sexuality & Mental health.

For many LGBTQ youth and adults from our communities, embracing and being open about their sexual identity is difficult because of the stigma, fear, ignorance and taboo that exists within our culture(s) against anything outside the "norm" of heterosexuality. The fact that we don't talk about sexuality culturally, can leave a lot of people who identify as LGBTQ vulnerable and often isolated with their sense of identity and belonging, which can and often does impact their mental health.

This conversation aims to break down some of those barriers by sharing the EastWesterner's story and experience with navigating her sexuality, & mental health while creating her own story of belonging and acceptance for herself by living her truth,  while also holding the door open for others.

*We encourage you to keep it respectful when engaging on this topic on our platform. Any comments that may create harm or are unproductive will be removed. Please note that we will also block anyone from this platform that may have a negative, harmful or derogatory approach in this conversation. In short, please come correct if you want to join this conversation. It is really important for us to keep this space safe for all of our community members by having respectful meaningful discourse.

---

In this episode we talk about:

- Spectrums of sexuality and correct acronyms 

- How cultural stigma around sexuality can impact someone who identifies as LGBTQ

- Why LGBTQ youth suffer from mental health issues more than others

- Outdated cultural taboos around the topic of sexuality

- The EastWesterners story of coming out to her family

- Tips for youth on how to approach coming out to loved ones from the EastWesterner

- The layers of oppression that LGBTQ youths/adults from our culture navigate on a day-to-day basis

- Accepting yourself as you are

---

Get in touch with The EastWesterner 

Instagram @theeastwesterner

---

Help us grow this podcast by word of mouth, please send this episode to your sister, friend, aunt, brother, your partner…..Let’s grown in wellness as a community.

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE, REVIEW AND RATE THE PODCAST. 

Follow us on IG and send questions via DM.

INSTAGRAM  @eriwellbeing

NEWSLETTER  Sign up here

---

The Eriwellbeing podcast is a mental health and wellbeing podcast, healing black and brown communities through open and honest conversations about our mental health.

Hosted by Ruthie Zerai and Mikal Woldu.

Produced by Ruthie Zerai, Mikal Woldu and @purecreationmedia

---

Disclaimer:

While we hope you love listening to and learning from the podcast, please note this is not a substitute for seeking professional help from licensed mental health professionals. Ruthie and Miki are not Mental health professionals, we are holding this space as community builders. We encourage you to seek professional help in your local area for any mental health concerns that you may be experiencing.

We are back with another episode of the podcast with fan favourite Dr Yacob Tekie! We're thrilled to bring back Dr Yacob to the podcast and share more of his wisdom and very important culturally competent perspective and experience as a mental health professional.

In this episode, we talk about all things therapy and why we should consider it as an important tool when it comes to taking care of our mental health. This episode will give you a better understanding of what therapy actually is and some of the cultural stumbling blocks that prevent us from going to therapy as well as tips for overcoming those.

---

In this episode we talk about:

- Defining therapy

- The importance of therapy as a fundamental mental health "tool"

- Why it can take us so long to actually seek out a therapist

- Individual vs group therapy

- How to find a therapist? What to look for?

- Barriers that get in the way for us when it comes to seeking therapy (talking to a stranger about our stuff/shame/lack of trust/fear)

---

Get in touch with Dr Yacob and follow his work

Instagram @dr.yacobtekie

Website Tesfa House Psychotherapy

Racial Literary Project - Lions Story

---

Help us grow this podcast by word of mouth so please send this episode to your sister, friend, aunt, brother, your partner…..Let’s grown in wellness as a community.

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE, REVIEW AND RATE THE PODCAST.

Follow us on IG and send questions via DM.

INSTAGRAM  @eriwellbeing

NEWSLETTER  Sign up here

---

The Eriwellbeing podcast is a mental health and wellbeing podcast, healing black and brown communities through open and honest conversations about our mental health.

Hosted by Ruthie Zerai and Mikal Woldu.

Produced by  Ruthie Zerai, Mikal Woldu and @purecreationmedia

---

Disclaimer:

While we hope you love listening to and learning from the podcast, please note this is not a substitute for seeking professional help from licensed mental health professionals. Ruthie and Miki are not Mental health professionals, we are holding this space as community builders. We encourage you to seek professional help in your local area for any mental health concerns that you may be experiencing.

Our first episode of 2021 is with no other than Luwame Tesfaye, fitness influencer, personal trainer, coach and  Founder of the popular wellness platform and community Luwame. We got to sit down and talk to Luwam about how to start off 2021 right when it comes to our fitness and nutrition habits. It is more important than ever for us to really take care of our health, in this episode Luwam shares her story to becoming a fitness influencer and many practical tips for how you can get started with putting your health first this year. Luwam is a powerhouse of a woman with a wealth of knowledge, she dropped a lot of gems in this episode to get you on the right frame of mind to level up your fitness this year.

---

In this episode we talk about:

- How to start off 2021 with healthier habits.

-How Luwam pivoted into fitness from a 9-5 office job.

- Luwams health philosophy, physical exercise and nutrition.

- How to create and set achievable goals for yourself, and how to do the work that comes with the big goal and dreams.

- Small vs big action.

- Advice for beginners.

- Health as a lifestyle vs quick changes.

- Accountability.

-Cultural misconceptions when it comes to health and fitness.

---

Get in touch with Luwam

Instagram @luwame_

Website luwame.com

Podcast Inspired by Luwame

---

Help us grow this podcast by word of mouth so please send this episode to your sister, friend, aunt, brother, your partner…..Let’s grown in wellness as a community.

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE, REVIEW AND RATE THE PODCAST.

Follow us on IG and send questions via DM.

INSTAGRAM  @eriwellbeing

NEWSLETTER  Sign up here

---

The Eriwellbeing podcast is a mental health and wellbeing podcast, healing black and brown communities through open and honest conversations about our mental health.

Hosted by Ruthie Zerai and Mikal Woldu.

Produced by  Ruthie Zerai, Mikal Woldu and @purecreationmedia

---

Disclaimer:

While we hope you love listening to and learning from the podcast, please note this is not a substitute for seeking professional help from licensed mental health professionals. Ruthie and Miki are not Mental health professionals, we are holding this space as community builders. We encourage you to seek professional help in your local area for any mental health concerns that you may be experiencing.

We are so excited to share our very first wellness edition of the podcast with Weini Smon, founder of @yogawithweini. Weini is a Vinyasa and Ashtanga yoga instructor, in this episode we talk to her about the importance of breathing properly and how paying attention to our breath can improve our health and wellbeing in so many ways. This is especially important in these times when we're experiencing a lot of tension and stress, to keep focusing on our breath to the ground and release anxiety and stress.  =Weini shares some great insight on this topic from the expert perspective of a wellness practitioner.  This episode really hones in on that we need to learn how to breathe properly to thrive in all areas of life.

 __

In this podcast, we explore: 

The power of breathing

Why 9/10 of us don't know  how to breathe properly

Weini's story to taking space in the wellness industry as a black woman

The importance of breathing to support your wellbeing and mental health 

How breathing better can improve your performance when it comes to physical exercise

 __

Get in touch with Weini:

IG @yogawithweini

Wim hof method 

---

Help us grow this podcast by word of mouth so please send this episode to your sister, friend, aunt, brother, your partner…..Let’s grown in wellness as a community.

PLEASE SUBSCRIBE, REVIEW AND RATE THE PODCAST.

Follow us on IG and send questions via DM.

INSTAGRAM  @eriwellbeing

NEWSLETTER  Sign up here

---

The Eriwellbeing podcast is a mental health and wellbeing podcast, healing black and brown communities through open and honest conversations about our mental health.

Hosted by Ruthie Zerai and Mikal Woldu.

Produced by  Ruthie Zerai, Mikal Woldu and @purecreationmedia

---

Disclaimer:

While we hope you love listening to and learning from the podcast, please note this is not a substitute for seeking professional help from licensed mental health professionals. Ruthie and Miki are not Mental health professionals, we are holding this space as community builders. We encourage you to seek professional help in your local area for any mental health concerns that you may be experiencing.