Community Cohorts

Community Cohorts

In addition to 1:1 services, Thambusami offers Community Cohorts. This space allows individuals of the Global Majority an opportunity to gather virtually and dialogue about a specific subject matter. Cohorts are a safe space to have honest and expansive dialogue. When people of the Global Majority participate in spaces that welcome their insight, particular worldview, and whole self, it has an impact that stretches beyond the Cohort space itself. Its not just about what you learn from a text or a speaker, you learn more about yourself in te process. Please see our past and current Cohort offerings below. Feel free to email ideas for future Cohorts you would like to see.

Previous Community Cohorts

Previous Community Cohorts

2023 Spring Cohort for south asians

8 Weeks

The trauma of Caste

A Dalit Feminist Meditation on Survivorship, Healing, and Abolition

By Thenmozhi Soundararajan

Calling all South Asian Caste Abolitionists & Anti-Castists!

Join me as we delve deep into this text and unpack what it means for us as South Asians in the diaspora. Regardless of ethnic, linguistic, cultural, or religious identity, caste has impacted our lives whether we realize it or not.

Who is this cohort for?

South Asians of all backgrounds, gender identities, sexual orientations, religious affiliations/ non-religious and ethnic identities who desire to debrahminize and dismantle the caste system and who want to build community with like-minded individuals.

As diasporic South Asians who bear a multitude of unhealed wounds (racism, racial violence, gender-based violence, oppression, patriarchy, sexism, queerphobia, loss of connection, displacement, colonization, family traumas, etc) it can be hard to grapple with the notion that you benefit from caste privilege or are complicit in caste-based violence especially if it was not openly acknowledged in your upbringing.

This Cohort is not a place to shame or guilt you. This Cohort is intended to be a transformative space that holds the complexity of your own marginalized identity and lived experience in tension with the truth of the death-dealing, violent, and oppressive caste system.

This is an invitation to co-create community, radical change, and revolutionary transformation in our lifetime. Just as many of us are well into our anti-racism journeys, speaking out against anti-Blackness and colorism, we must acknowledge that the caste system pre-dates the construct of race and study how this system has operated in the same brutal manner as anti-Blackness, therefore, making caste abolition an urgent matter. Join me as we do the hard work and endeavor into becoming good ancestors. Application period now closed.

Reflections from previous cohort participants

  • "It has really helped me find community and like minded people who are willing to do the work together and invite each other's experiences, past traumas and build a meaningful future together. I have been estranged from community due to the pandemic housing and job crisis as well as my choice to reevaluate and comprehend my faith which left a big void inside of me. This space helped me reconnect again and heal parts of my heart and laugh and cry and talk openly in this sacred space. I am forever grateful for this opportunity to join the space 🙏 "

    South Asian Cohort - The Trauma of Caste

  • "Everyone should experience this level of intimate conversations especially people willing to do the inner work. This type of community is neccesary for change and conversation and awareness in the multitude. There is so much love and room to express yourself and be authentically you that brings a meaningful exchange and transformative work."

    South Asian Cohort - The Trauma of Caste

  • "I absolutely loved being in this virtual space with everyone and so grateful for your incredible facilitation. You were a caring and thoughtful discussion leader. You helped us sit with the difficulties and complexities that the book was bringing up. And you also brought in so much inspiration and vulnerability to this space and I felt nourished by these weekly conversations. I am now more confident about exploring and investigating further my own complicities with caste supremacy and the role of caste in my Bangalee lineage. It made a huge difference to be in a brown space having this conversation. I am sure that from now on my activism and research will both be shaped by this experience."

    South Asian Cohort - The Trauma of Caste

  • If you could describe this cohort in one word or short phrase how would describe your experience here? "RADICAL VULNERABILITY"

    South Asian Cohort - The Trauma of Caste

  • If you could describe this cohort in one word or short phrase "This was a necessary cohort experience for me. To view it from our community's lens and not as a spectator to other anti-oppression work. This one is, we are in it, we are it, we are the doers of the oppression, so I feel very emboldened in the necessity of learning this work."

    South Asian Cohort - The Trauma of Caste