Who We Are
Wanasah is a new non-profit mental health agency created to address the urgent mental health needs of Black youth and their families in Regent Park and neighbouring areas, in downtown Toronto. We are a space where Black youth and their families recognize themselves.
Our programs and services are FREE for residents of Regent Park and neighbouring areas
Black Centric
All programs are developed through a trauma informed, Black centric, identity and ethnicity specific lens.
Inclusive
Inclusive services recognize the rights of all individuals to mutual respect and acceptance without any biases.
Holistic
Wanasah considers our spiritual, emotional, social and mental factors, not only the diagnosis and symptoms.
Culturally Safe
Culturally safe services support individuals in drawing strength from their own identity and community.
our mission
What We Do
We provide counselling, case management and crisis supports to Black youth aged 12 to 25 and their families living in Toronto’s Regent Park. Our services incorporate an anti-racist, anti-Black racism and anti-oppression framework that integrates principles of intersectionality.
Healing Together
A Black Youth-Centred Trauma Symposium
On June 9 and 10, 2023, Wanasah and the Black Health Alliance (BHA) convened Healing Together, a two-day symposium aimed at creating a model of trauma care for Black youth and their families and communities living in Regent Park, Toronto and in similar, under-served urban communities in Canada.
The symposium brought together the community’s youth and their families, along with frontline mental-health and substance-use health-service providers, community leaders and a diverse group of experts to reflect upon the key values, principles, and practices supporting such a model.
Why We’re Needed
Our Community Voices
We all need help, but we don’t always feel welcome. If we feel welcome we will come and we feel welcome here.
Wanasah Community Member
Sometimes it feels like “they” think we are used to all this pain… that we don’t hurt because a black youth getting shot is normal to us.
Wanasah Youth
We come from civil war to another war here. We learned the language, the lifestyle. Now we learn about the war here. I can’t sleep comfortably at night.
Wanasah Community Member
Regent Park has so much trauma, we are truly broken. You feel this calm in you heart when you speak to someone who gets it.
Regent Park Resident
You can’t do mainstream work for people that mainstream doesn’t see.
Regent Park Resident
Our Community Partners
