2024-2025 Annual Report + A Message From Our Executive Director

This report marks the 17th and 18th years of Indigo Cultural Center’s existence. I remain in awe of how we continue to grow. As I reflect on the meaning of ‘growth,’ for Indigo ‘growing’ has never equated to becoming a larger organization. In fact, our number of team members has remained consistent over the past 5 years or so. Instead, I measure our growth by our deepening of our commitment to social justice. Our growth is also measured by our increasing influence in shaping the narratives in our field that are grounded in principles of Healing Justice*.

Over the past two years we have continued our strong tradition of partnering with agencies around the country to conduct action-research and evaluation that is firmly grounded in racial equity principles. One of our newer evaluation partnerships is opening a portal for us to explore authentic centering of community in mental health with a strong Africentric lens. This partnership has been especially inspirational for me, and is starting to influence our future agenda in our evaluation offerings and beyond!

Additionally, these past two years have inspired new directions in our Racial Equity for IECMH Workforce Development Division. The robust agenda of Healing Justice-centered programming we’ve offered over the past two years is made possible by unrestricted funding from two committed philanthropic organizations who practice ‘trust-based philanthropy’. Indeed, Healing Justice principles are also present in the way we are resourced to do our work! In our field, we refer to this alignment as the ‘parallel process.’

I remain humbled as I bear witness to how our beautiful, loving, compassionate, talented team is living into Healing Justice principles and bringing our audacious dreams to life.

In love and light,

- Dr. Eva Marie Shivers, Executive Director

View the fiscal years 2024-2025 annual report on the Indigo Cultural Center

* Healing Justice is operationalized by Loretta Pyle (2019) and the Kindred Healing Justice Collective. Healing Justice enters holistic approaches to understanding, healing, and disrupting intergenerational trauma and cycles of violence. Emphasizes the importance of both personal healing and collective, community-based efforts to transform the impacts of oppression. Engages practices that connect mind, body, spirit, and land as interconnected dimensions of well-being. Recognizes that all people are relationally and systemically interconnected, shaping both harm and healing processes. Aims to transform organizational and institutional conditions that affect worker well-being, rights, and empowerment. Understands that joy and pleasure create possibility to be in right relationship with ourselves, one another, and the land.