As the country celebrates its 250th anniversary, the Ujima Men’s Collective (UMC) is continuing to advance our motto, E pluribus unum, out of many, one.
The non-profit organization for Black same gender loving men and those who love and work with them enables its members and volunteers to meet, educate and build a strong network to address issues of safety and health concerns in their community as well as strive for equality and enlightenment in the greater community.
“We chose our five tenets as leadership, advocacy, spirituality, relationships, and health and wellness so that they were broad enough to empower and enable us to be very holistic about what we do,” explained UMC Founder and Executive Director Lorenzo Robertson.
The genesis for UMC came to Robertson when he was living in Tampa and working with the People of Color AIDS Coalition. It was there he witnessed Black men networking at a conference and where he also was introduced to the annual cultural holiday Kwanzaa.
“Heterosexual men are in fraternities, they’re in civic organizations, they’re in Masons and there’s a plethora of ways they can collectively come together and have conversations, where, unfortunately, in the gay community it was really about going to bars,” he explained. “I was looking at the different principles of Kwanzaa, and Ujima was the one with collective worker responsibilities that stood out to me because it brings people together. We’re responsible for what we’re doing for community, but regardless of what we are doing together, we still have individual responsibilities.”
Since its founding, UMC has received crucial support from The Our Fund Foundation grants for social justice and arts and culture programming.
“Many years ago, when we initially started our mentoring program, we received funding from The Our Fund Foundation to implement our protege project,” Robertson said. “It opened the door and was the catalyst for how we were able to bring older and younger Black same gender loving men together, building relationships. We try to pair people so that they’re going to be beneficial to each other because we want the mentoring to be reciprocal.”
As a diverse collective of members ranging in age from 18 to 80, UMC has produced a documentary about its efforts to create intergenerational connections, which recently premiered and is being offered to film festivals.
“We’re using that as a tool to educate community members about the need for more interaction within our senior community because so many times there’s this divide between older and younger LGBTQ communities,” Robertson shared. “The documentary is about who the older men are now, who they were, and how they went through the AIDS epidemic.”
Another educational program that UMC has launched is the B.R.O.T.H.A.S. Project, an acronym for Brothers Reaching Out to Help Another Son, that fosters leadership and advocacy.
“We conduct these once a month at our office,” Robertson said. “They’re called the Brothers’ Table because in the African American community so many things happened at the dinner table as we sat around and talked about family and ‘What did you do today?’ So, we modeled our educational session on that design.”
Since Black men have higher rates of cholesterol, hypertension, and cardiovascular issues, UMC hosts its annual Man Up Festival in the Park, offering a full day of health screenings, entertainment, education, food, and activities. UMC also offers HIV testing throughout the year and works with other organizations that do health screenings and refer those with health issues to providers who can assist them.
Robertson acknowledges that it takes a broad collective approach to meet today’s challenges.
“Our organization is here in the community, and we are here to serve the community and not just one particular population,” Robertson stressed. “There is no cost to join, and we do a lot of activities which are not specifically for and about Black men. Everyone is welcome to attend our events and functions. We still have some challenges with acceptance in our community around HIV and same sex marriage. It’s gotten much better, but we still have a way to go.”
The Art of Community
The Merriam-Webster dictionary tells us that as a noun, collective is a cooperative unit or organization. However, it is that dictionary’s definition of the word as an adjective that is a clarion call for our community: “a number of persons or things considered as one group or whole” and “involving all members of a group as distinct from its individuals.”
We recently celebrated Pride. As individuals, we rejoice in our own self-respect, acceptance, and joy in who we are. However, it is when we act beyond ourselves and work together that we move our community forward — from the Stonewall Inn rioters, to the ACT UP activists of the early AIDS crisis, to the many organizations that The Our Fund Foundation supports.
Find a group that speaks to your passion and get involved. Now, that’s something of which to be proud.
David Jobin
President & CEO
