Healing at the root.
Root & Reconnect brings African-centred wellbeing into the spaces where people already live, work, and gather, making care accessible, affordable, and part of everyday life.
Why this matters
Why This Matters
African communities have always known how to hold one another. For generations, collective witnessing, embodied practice, and the intergenerational transmission of wisdom were not programmes, they were simply how communities lived. How grief was processed, how identity was transmitted, how people were reminded of who they were and where they belonged.
Over the last several centuries, much of this was disrupted, through colonial erasure, land dispossession, and the systematic dismantling of cultural structures. The knowledge did not disappear, but the infrastructure to sustain it was severely weakened.
The cost of that disruption is visible now. More than 1 billion people worldwide, and nearly 150 million in Africa, are living with a mental health condition (WHO, 2025).
1 in 4
Kenyans may experience a mental health condition in their lifetime
(Kenya Ministry of Health)
75%
of Kenyans with a mental health condition do not receive treatment
(Kenya Ministry of Health, 2024)
70%
of African youth feel anxious or unsupported
(R&R Festival Research, 2025)
Most people don't fall apart all at once. They slowly accumulated what there was no space to put down:
Root & Reconnect is not importing a solution. We are remembering one.
What we do
Care that meets peoplewhere they already are.
Somatic Regulation
Movement, breath, rhythm, and embodied practice that help the body find calm, building the internal capacity to manage stress before it escalates.
Psychoeducation
Building emotional literacy and self-awareness so people can name what they feel, understand their stress responses, and develop practical self-care tools.
Knowledge Transmission
Transmitting African healing wisdom across generations. Restoring identity, belonging, and the cultural frameworks that make healing feel familiar and possible.
Cūcū (grandmother) pictured is 105 years old.
We make this accessible through three commitments: Access, Affordability, and Normalising Care.
1) Access — we bring wellbeing into the spaces people already trust, rather than waiting for people to find us.
2) Affordability — those who can pay do, and that revenue helps sustain free or low-cost access for those who can't. Affordability is built in, not added on as charity.
3) Normalising Care — we treat conversations about emotional health as ordinary as conversations about physical health. Care as culture.
Our impact
Our Impact
2 Playtime & Wellbeing Experiences curated
6 Quiet / Wellbeing Space integrations into large festival
250+ anonymous sticky-note reflections
300+ direct Quiet / Wellbeing space participants in festivals
8,000+ quarterly attendees of Nairobi Street Food Festival, giving us a total reach of 40,000+
2,000+ Mental Health Champions trained
600+ Mental Health Champions graduated
A practitioner network of somatic, clinical and community healers, including Esteem Mental Health Consultancy as strategic partners.
Root & Reconnect
Theory of change
How Change Happens
WE BELIEVE PREVENTION IS POWERFUL.
When people have access to safe, culturally relevant spaces to care for their wellbeing, they become better equipped to manage stress, build healthier relationships, and support those around them.
Individuals, families, and communities have access to culturally grounded, non-clinical wellbeing spaces that integrate nervous system regulation, collective care, and African ancestral wisdom.
Individuals build the capacity to regulate stress before it escalates. Through changed relational patterns at home and at work, they begin to create the conditions for healthier family systems, stronger community bonds, and showing up more fully in workplaces and daily life.
Consistent delivery of this model reduces pressure on healthcare systems, eases pressure on strained workplaces, and strengthens livelihoods, economic participation, and the conditions for collective abundance.
Stronger Families
Stronger Communities
Healthier Society
Healing is individual, communal, and ecological.
Prevention today • Connection always • Collective abundance for tomorrow
“The experience touched something core in my soul. The act of planting trees with bare hands, contributing to nature with organic fertiliser after walking in the forest and then dancing and playing, it was unlike anything I have ever experienced in my life.”
PLAYTIME attendee, 27 June 2026
We are one part of a wider orchestra.
If you share our values, we'd love to explore what's possible together.