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How Anyanwu, Founder Of The Human Root, Helps Communities Overcome Bias And Redistribute Power

This article is more than 5 years old.

Doreen Pierre

Anyanwu, founder and Director of The Human Root, is only 36 years old, but she has already been doing education-focused social justice work for over twenty years.

At twelve, she became involved in her school’s Future Educator’s of America club, eventually becoming president. By fourteen, she was speaking at her community’s city council meetings and participating in board meetings for education. As an adult, she got certified in Child & Adolescent Treatment, studied human rights education, and worked for several youth programs teaching social justice.

Two and a half years ago, she founded The Human Root, which works with schools, nonprofits, universities, and corporations on raising cultural consciousness, bridging cultural gaps, and making substantive change that moves communities forward.

She founded the company because she noticed a problem. As equity work gained more popularity, she observed that many people she worked with were excited about the concept of change but weren’t necessarily prepared for it in practice.

“I realized being in spaces around privileged and/or white folks, I would be under attack if I pushed people for change. As long as I was talking about it and performing it, everyone was excited.”

When she advocated for real, substantive change, though, people got scared. “Folks wouldn’t want to redistribute power because to redistribute power means you have to share it.”

Change, Anyanwu says, begins to happen when the conversation stops being exciting and starts being challenging. “We have to have integrity to look at the truth of what’s happening. That’s when it gets difficult. That’s when people don’t want to do it anymore.”

So, she created a business plan that would help her show people how to do it, entered it in the 2016 Brooklyn Public Library's PowerUP! Business Plan Competition, and won first prize, $15,000, to launch The Human Root.

Doreen Pierre

Unlike many companies with similar missions who visit schools and workplaces for a few hours or days, The Human Root spends two to three years working with clients to help implement cultural and policy changes that last.

“If you believe you can go into a space and transform anything in a matter of hours, let alone days, you’re fooling yourself,” Anyanwu says. “To create change, people’s spirits, hearts, and perspectives, and most importantly their feelings have to be involved, and if you’re going to do that you have to create a relationship.”

Anyanwu writes personalized curriculum for each client based on their needs and goals. After one year of working with that curriculum, she begins to work with the client on an action plan. She spends the following year helping the client implement changes in procedures, policies, expectations, and distributions of power.

“Our goal is to redistribute power based on the context of different forms of bias that show up,” Anyanwu says.

After launching, the company grew fast. Anyanwu’s biggest challenge was learning to slow down. She found herself taking on too many clients, many of whom did not fully understand what The Human Root intended to do in their communities.

Now, before taking on a new client, Anyanwu spends more time ensuring their expectations align with what The Human Root does. “Last summer I had to pause and say if you just take client after client, you’re making this about entrepreneurialism…If you chase the demand for this work you will become something that’s not true to your word and not true to the ethics of why you developed this company.”

Anyanwu is proud she made the decision to prioritize her values over more business, even though many people told her she was wrong. “I’ve had people say this business will never thrive because you’re not out there doing it the way everyone else is doing it,” she says.

She believes her identity as a gender nonconforming, masculine of center, Black, gay woman helped give her this boldness. “I think being an entrepreneur you have to have a lot of courage, and you have to be unapologetic in a lot of ways. Because when it gets hard, you have to pick yourself up and keep going. I think being a woman that doesn’t present myself in a way people expect me to created that in me.”

Anyanwu has pushed through unimaginable hardship to get where she is today. A few years before founding The Human Root, she was shot three times while pulling out of a parking space on her way home from work. To this day, she doesn’t know who shot her or why. For about three and half years, she couldn’t work while her body healed, and she also faced criminalization by the news and medical industries. “They see GSW and you’re black, they make assumptions,” she says.

She brings this experience to The Human Root every day. Before the shooting, she had been in graduate school studying human rights education and more specifically, how the brain reacts to trauma. Being shot, she says, “Gave me a three year in depth journey in the full range of being a human being as far as how trauma lands on the body and how it feels to work through it. That is the crux of what The Human Root is.”

It is not only her trauma that she feels informs her work, but also her process of healing. “It’s one thing to know what suffering is like, but to know and evolve and liberate out of that, I have something different to offer.”

She says she enters the room, now, not from a deficit perspective, but from a liberated one. “One of the things that’s important to me to inspire people to know is if you have resources, if you have the intention, if you communicate and you’re transparent, you can push through whatever struggles come your way.”

To other social entrepreneurs looking to overcome challenges, launch a business, and make a difference, Anyanwu says to first and foremost, use your resources. “We often have resources to support and help us, but we’re so isolated in thinking of the idea and what we want to do that we do not develop community that can support our work.”

With this, she emphasizes, she is not only talking about financial support, but rather people who can help with tasks like writing a business plan, learning what branding means, and networking. “No one does anything alone,” she says.

Additionally, she says, “When it gets hard, don’t stop. When it gets hard, that means you’re doing something right. When it gets difficult, that means your vision is possible. When it gets difficult it means you’re exercising the skills necessary to move yourself to the next level.”

Anyanwu is proud that no matter how hard it became, she never stopped. “I’m proud of the fact that a little girl that has seen and been through everything from homelessness to being shot still did the work she needed to do to go to school, still did the work she needed to do to be a part of a community, to even have The Human Root exist in the first place. I’m proud that it exists."

 

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