This is for you.

Whether you are reading this because you want to help make it possible, or because you are quietly wondering if it might be possible for you — this page is for both of you. The person who gives $10 and the person who books a scouting trip next month. The person who shares this link and the person who receives it at exactly the right moment. All of you belong here.

Something is happening in Mérida, Mexico that most people have not heard about yet.

Black Americans are arriving here and within weeks, sometimes days, something shifts. The tension they did not realize they were carrying starts to lift. They sleep differently. They eat differently. They parent differently. They move through the world differently. People who have not felt safe in years start walking slowly, not because they have nowhere to be, but because there is nowhere they are being told to hurry away from.
This is not a vacation effect. Vacations wear off. This is something else. In treatment, they put you somewhere far away from home for a reason. Distance from the people, the places, and the patterns that reinforced the damage creates the conditions for something new. Mérida is that distance. Not a resort. Not a getaway. A genuine environmental reset.
Relationships and marriages that people have been wanting to improve become easier to work on when the noise that has been drowning them out finally goes quiet. Some people discover there is more to build together than they ever had the space to see. Others, with the clarity that comes when the distractions are finally gone, see their lives honestly for the first time and make decisions they had been avoiding for years. What changes in Mérida is not the relationship itself. What changes is the ability to finally see it clearly and choose intentionally.

PULL QUOTE: This is what we have been building. Not a program. An environment. And inside that environment, programs grow.

The police here do not see a threat when they see us. The locals never got the memo that we were supposed to be dangerous. Strangers stand close because warmth is simply who they are here. Access to clean, organic, non-GMO food is not a luxury gated behind income or zip code. At the local market, at honest prices, without the additives that are banned in Mexico but legal in the United States. After years of bracing, that kind of ordinary human kindness feels like medicine.
For the children.
Pause here. This is the part that matters most.
The children who arrive in Mérida are our next generation. They are our responsibility. They are the proof that every decision we make today about how we live, what we build, and what kind of community we are willing to invest in — it is all for them.
We have watched a generation of Black children grow up bracing for a world that was not built for them. Shaped by systems and screens and structures that were never designed with their flourishing in mind. Labeled before they could read. Taught to survive rather than thrive. They arrived at school already exhausted by the weight of just being who they are.
Here, something different is possible.
Our children in Mérida run free. They make friends across languages and cultures. They are learning who they are before the world has a chance to tell them who they are not. A child who was labeled difficult in three different schools is thriving in a Mexican classroom, making friends in a second language, unbothered and free. Parents here will tell you the same thing. They wish it were easier to share this with their families back home. They want to reach through the phone and show their mothers, their siblings, their old friends what their children look like now. Happy. Safe. Whole.
And this is only the beginning. Every other community in the world has built schools shaped by their children’s needs. Professional environments where development is the priority. Spaces where being who you are is a foundation, not a burden to overcome. That conversation is already happening here. With your help, we can do that work today.
For the elders.
There is a conversation about Mérida that does not get enough attention. This city is one of the most ideal environments for Black retirees anywhere in the world. The pace is measured. Healthcare is accessible and genuinely affordable. A fixed income becomes freedom again. People who spent decades in systems that consumed them discover here that there is still time. Still life. Still purpose.
And when elders are present in a community, the whole community is stronger. Our children need the wisdom and presence that older generations carry. Our elders need to feel useful, active, and seen. Mérida brings both generations together and gives them reasons to need each other. That is community working the way community is supposed to work.
For you. Wherever you are right now.
If any of this is landing somewhere inside you — know that you do not have to wonder about it from a distance. TBME offers scouting trips where you can come to Mérida, experience Black Mérida for yourself, walk the streets, sit at the tables, meet the people, breathe the air of the Yucatan, and decide for yourself what might be possible. Many of the people in our community today found Mérida through a TBME scouting trip. They came to experience it for themselves, went home, put their affairs in order, and came back for good.

CALLOUT BOX:
Ready to experience it?
Join a TBME Scouting Trip and see Black Mérida for yourself.
blackmerida.mx/scouting-trips

The Black Mérida Experience was built on one truth: your surroundings shape everything. For generations, Black Americans have carried wounds that were never theirs to carry. The anger, the anxiety, the exhaustion, the distrust. These are not character flaws. They are the predictable result of an environment that was never designed for our flourishing.

Mexico abolished slavery in 1829, more than three decades before the United States. The man who did it was Vicente Guerrero, Mexico’s second president, a man of African and Indigenous descent. For a time, enslaved Black Americans knew that crossing that southern border meant freedom. The Underground Railroad ran south too. Those stories were never told because they ended up in Spanish.

We are finishing what they started.

We are also conscious of what we bring with us. Toxicity travels. We refuse to import into this culture what we are working so hard to leave behind. We move as grateful guests, shopping local, honoring tradition, and holding ourselves to the same standards we are asking this environment to help us reach.

Every Thursday for the past year and a half, our community gathers and finds each other. Adults find deep conversation, real laughter, and people who genuinely understand. No rehearsed welcome. Just people who chose something different, choosing each other every week. Beyond Thursdays we host the Backyard Boogie, The Social Table, the Soiree, Self Care Sundays, and more. This is what chosen family looks like when it is built on purpose.

We feed families every Monday through The Kitchen, a weekly home-cooked meal program built on fresh organic food prepared by a local chef who shops the markets. We invest in children and adults through development and healing programs. We show up when someone gets sick, when someone needs help navigating something unfamiliar, when a new family arrives and needs a hand finding their footing.

The environment opens the door. TBME walks through it with you. That is why we do not just welcome people. We work with them. Adults learning to recognize patterns they have been carrying since childhood. Children being taught who they actually are before the world has a chance to tell them who they are not. Families discovering that the version of themselves they always sensed was possible is actually within reach.

We have been funding all of it ourselves because we believe in it enough to pay for it first.

That was the first fruit. Now we need help from everyone.

Ten dollars from enough people changes the timeline. A large donor accelerates everything. Whatever you give goes directly toward feeding families, investing in children, expanding programs, and building the legal and financial systems that keep every dollar transparent and every promise kept.

The ground is ready. The people are arriving. The proof is here.

Come be part of what’s being built.