About the Mission and the Work

About the Mission

To holistically Inspire, Empower and Assist Women and Girls, especially we who are descendants of the African diaspora, as we work to Sustain and Strengthen the Spiritual, Intellectual and Physical development of Ourselves, our Families, our Communities and our Country.

About the Work

Telos Training, Inc’s commitment to a “3-D Life” is primarily a work of recognition and reclamation of power, a work for women who are prime movers, not reactors. That’s why Telos Training, Inc.’s commitment to a “3-D Life” is about more than leveraging blows against patriarchy, racism, classism and systems of white supremacy. Our commitment to a “3-D Life” is about the courage to create holistically healthy spaces for excellence across multiple communities, not just leveraging blows against fragmentation and modernity, alienation and isolation. A fully formed “3-D Life” encompasses and embraces the spiritual, intellectual and physical components of the self and that’s why the work of Telos Training, Inc. while fashioned after the work of black American women contains insights that are applicable to all who “have an ear to hear”. To date Telos Training, Inc’s works have been full, wide, cursive and expansive, like the bodies of the black women whose lessons it models.

We’ve hosted conferences, “A Day to Make a Difference” and “60 Life Lessons from the Garden”, as well as conversations and debates on topics ranging from the civil war in Liberia to the 2008 U.S. presidential contest. We’ve talked about rates of lactation in the U.S. and why black women are at the bottom of the scale and what we can do about increasing the health of our children. We’ve challenged one another about correlations between marriage and economic stability, educational options to address the so-called “achievement gap” and ways to address the school to prison pipeline. We’ve shared ideas about building collective community memories, fighting generational curses and how everybody’s an “heirloom seed” deserving of a well-cultivated raised bed as a place of love.

Telos Training, Inc. has hosted speakers as diverse as Ohio State University certified Master Gardeners and Isabel Wilkerson, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Warmth of Other Suns. Ms. Wilkerson spent an entire day at the Church of Christ of the Apostolic Faith as part of its 100 year anniversary celebration and a good portion of that day was spent engaging children at a free event open to the community.  We also held a large “back to school event” for 200 families with free book bags for each grade, filled with school supplies; the highlight of that event was an amazingly motivational talk by Dr. Vince Adams from the U.S. Dept of Energy. He engaged the parents as well as the children with his talk  about being black and poor and an immigrant and a cricket player and a husband and a father-and getting a Ph.D. and the importance of remembering and giving back.

Telos Training, Inc. has also hosted cooking classes, seed starting & transplanting classes, and in 2014, thanks to a United Way grant we hosted a “Canning, Pickling and Preserving” class; we made Strawberry Jam, Garlic-Dill Pickles and big jars of Basil, Roasted Garlic & Tomato Sauce!