I. Malik Saafir
Educator. Advisor. Consultant.
Some problems cannot be solved by one profession or one institution.
Disaster affects more than infrastructure.
Environmental harm affects more than physical health. Institutions need more than emergency plans.
Communities need care, meaning, relationships, and the capacity to recover over time.
My work helps connect those realities.
Areas of Work
My work brings together fields that are often treated separately.
Spiritual Care & Faith Communities
Strengthening the capacity of institutions and communities to care for people across religious, cultural, and organizational boundaries.
Disaster & Long-Term Recovery
Supporting the human and organizational work that continues after the immediate emergency has passed.
Environmental Harm & Community Healing
Examining the long-term consequences of environmental harm and supporting pathways toward community healing and resilience.
Learning & Institutional Capacity
Designing learning , training, and leadership approaches that help organizations build sustainable capacity.
My Approach: The work continues after the emergency.
I do not provide emergency or crisis response.
My work begins where response ends, with the spiritual, human, and institutional work of long-term recovery and resilence.
Work With Me
Speaking, consulting, and advising
Organizations do not only hire services. They engage a way of thinking. Here is how that engagement can take shape.
Speaking
For conferences, universities, nonprofits, and businesses.
Consulting
For institutions working through complex organizational or community challenges.
Teaching
For organizations developing innovative teaching strategies and methods that drive cultural transformation.
Advising
For leaders, boards, initiatives, and partnerships.
Looking for Theater of Justice training for your team? Stage-by-stage and Train-the-Trainer live at The Black Rumi Institute.
Why This Work Matters
The need is real, and it is growing.
Spiritual Care & Faith Communities
70 %
of U.S. adults want their spiritual needs addressed in health care, but only 15% have ever seen a chaplain
Disaster & Long-Term Recovery
24%
of adults displaced by a disaster were out of their homes for more than six months or never returned.
Environmental Harm & Community Healing
75%
more likely: Black Americans compared with white Americans, live next to polluting facilities.
Learning & Institutional Capacity
75%
of nonprofits report job vacancies, and half say burnout hurts hiring and keeping staff.
Where The Work Lives Now
A life lived across four traditions, and home in one.
I. Malik Saafir
Malik is an educator, advisor, and consultant based in Louisville, Kentucky. His faith journey began in the Black Baptist Church and moved through Sunni Islam, Reform Judaism, and Zen Buddhism before arriving at his practice today: West African Sufism
Today, he serves as Executive Director of The Village Commons, where he provides compassionate care as a community chaplain for those who experience environmental trauma, and as Creative Director of The Black Rumi Institute for Black Religion.
Writing
Writing
Ideas in Progress
Book Chapter (2020)
Performance Pedagogy Using the Theater of Justice
The SAGE Handbook of Critical Pedagogies. The published foundation of my teaching method.
In Progress
Where Is The Work? The Encore Stage and the Accounting of Power in Performance Pedagogy
A follow-up chapter on what a named actor's power actually built, and what it left behind.
The Village Commons
Common Sense Newsletter
What a people already knows. Writing from The Village Commons on community, care and everyday wisdom
The Black Rumi Institute
The Black Reed Newsletter
Voices of Justice in the Disapora. A monthly publication on one harm and one community's answer to it.
Words That Shaped The Work
"It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten."
Akan Proverb (Sankofa)
"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."
James Baldwin, "As Much Truth As One Can Bear," New York Times Book Review, 1962.
"I am for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against."
Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 1965.
"Listen to this reed how it complains: it is telling a tale of separations."
Jalal al-Din Rumi, Masnavi, Book I, line 1 (R.A. Nicholson translation).
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