Building social capital. Parenting in community. Strengthening Black intimacy.
Who We Are
Black Family Blueprint is a coaching and consulting group focused on activating historically black families to employ strategies that strengthen parenting, support intimate relationships, and increase the collective capacity to build social capital.
“A necessity for mental and social wellness of Black families. Black Family Blueprint is planting seeds for the wealth of the next generations to come.”
Mujasi and Ayolanda Bandele
In their personal journey to strengthen their ethnic identity, begin the process of healing from intergenerational traumas, and uncover their family history, Adrian and Ayolanda have collaborated in life, love, and the pursuit of liberation for black people for nearly 20 years. With an emphasis on Black heritage, their professional experience ranges from early childhood, youth, and family development, to community engagement, public policy, and social action. Adrian and Ayolanda are devoted to the healthy sustainability of Black Families and are excited to share a Black Family Blueprint with all who have a vested interest in implementing solutions to uplift the collective Black community.
Our Workshops
Rooted in research, theory, and ethical principles, our workshops are innovative, hands-on, and interactive. Amidst ongoing inflictions against black life and wellness, Black Family Blueprint holds the value that intentional, all-Black spaces are vital to the healing, resilience, and transformation of Black people. We are committed to creating culturally sensitive learning environments that enhance overall wellness within Black family structures.
Parenting Against white supremacy
Parenting Through White Supremacy is Black Family Blueprint’s signature workshop that explores parental strategies designed to build Black families resilience to the impact of white-supremacy. The workshop uses binary framework to explore parental practices from a historical and modern context while providing techniques for community and social empowerment.
Intimacy of Blackness
Intimate Blackness is designed for newly committed and long-standing Black couples. This workshop explores romantic love in historically black communities and culminates with the presentation of “commitments”, which act as strategies to build and enhance the foundation for a quality relationship longevity.
Black s.a.f.e.
Black Secure Attachment For Empowerment is a workshop to examine underlying relationship dynamics between parent and child. The curriculum employs the secure-attachment theory as the foundation to discussing strengths and challenges to Black parental connections to children.
building a black child
Building a Black Child is one-day seminar that explores early childhood, implicit memory, and the shaping of perception. Using a self-reflective approach, this workshop offers new and expecting parents the understanding and skill-set to create a positive Af mental model for their infant and toddler.
Black Family Facts:
The nature of the historically Black family has been misconstrued, misinterpreted, and unjustly compared to the nuclear white middle-class family for racially motivated political gains. The repercussion on society has been an erroneous understanding of the existence of Black family life in America. Black Family Blueprint is committed to elevating the strength and resiliency factors of Black families, while exposing much needed facts about its functions.
Co-parenting as a mutual value
While Black parents are stigmatized with the highest unwed child-births, co-parenting is a valued process that is tied to extended familial ties. As it has been since emancipation, co-parenting with different residency is an ongoing parental practice among Black parents, with increasing numbers in the 21st century. The absent Black father is a myth when families are reviewed from this alternate lens.
— Levs, 2017. Huffington Post
Black marriage and coupling
Recent articles have cited the destitute marital status of Black men and women stating their possession of the highest unmarried status, higher than average divorce rate, and a claim of non-Black preferential spouses. Concrete evidence points to the reality that Black married couples have increased by 12% since 2016; 85% of Black men have a Black wife; and 93% of Black women have had a Black husband.
— Black Demographics (sourced from Census Bureau), 2017
Parent-child dyad
Black parenting practices are too often associated with authoritarian parent-child relationships. Limited data associates this view to discipline tactics without observing the broader connection. Parent-child connectedness within Black families are one of the biggest factors to high school graduation rates. Additionally, this same connection, or lack thereof, is a determining factor to Black children’s anxiety and depression, resilience, and their ability to cope with incidents of racism.