WNY Black Wellness Directory
The WNY Black Wellness Directory is a new project spearheaded by a Buffalo-based group of community-minded mental health and wellness experts. This was a project born from the ashes of two tragic events and profound community trauma.
A racist mass shooting on May 14, 2022 at the Tops grocery store on Buffalo’s East Side claimed the lives of ten Black citizens. On the heels of that tragedy came another: A four-day blizzard in December 2022 killed 47 people. Two-thirds of those who died were Black.
What’s more, the absence of sufficient healthcare services, coupled with the under-representation of racial diversity among healthcare providers, plays a significant role in the suicide risk among Black youth. In 2021, a full 18% of Black high school students said they had a suicide plan, and a full 15% reported making a suicide attempt.
There’s a clear and urgent need for culturally responsive mental health resources and community healing.
Enter the Buffalo Chapter of the National Association of Black Social Workers (BABSW). Chapter leadership—including Dior Lindsey-Virgil, LMSW and Karen Williams, LCSW CASAC— worked with Karl Shallowhorn, a special advisor to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service’s Regional Office, to secure state funding to for the project. The trio partnered with Shantelle Patton, owner of That Brown Bag Minority Business Directory, to create WNY’s Black Wellness Resource Directory.
Their wish list for a new website? A searchable directory of Black wellness professionals. An easy-to-navigate resources listing to connect people organizations and information. A secret, members-only area to help facilitate connections between Black professionals. A blog and an events calendar for sharing information and events. A means of collecting donations and email addresses. Oh, and a way to do all of that without getting grey hair or going bonkers trying to keep track of it all.
Done, done, and done.
I still can’t believe I got to be even a small part of making this important work happen. What an incredible honor it was—and what a pleasure it has been to get to know Karen and Dior and give them the website they deserve!
Kind words
“Kristen has amazing skills! She will do whatever she can to make sure that you get the website that you want and need. She is very responsive and helpful! I would recommend her to anyone!”
Dior Lindsey, LMSW
President, Buffalo Association of Black Social Workers
The web design process
As soon as Karen and Dior secured their state grant funding, we were off to the races!
They needed some help writing the wording for their new website, so I connected them to my friend and talented writer Jordana Halpern. She interviewed them, then worked with them to finalize the wording. Their experience with her was seamless—she took care of formatting it for the website and sent it to me all tied up with a bow. It was as glorious as it sounds.
While the wording process was under way, Karen and Dior were hard at work gathering the rest of the content I needed for their website. And there was a lot of it!
They curated stock photos and gathered partner logos and information.
They gathered all of the information and links for their resources page.
They finalized the information I needed to build the secret, members-only area of their website, like the subscription fee and renewal frequency.
And last but not least, they gathered a list of funds to which donations could be directed, finalized descriptions for each, and decided on suggested donation amounts.
I recommended that Dior and Karen use Community Box to create a searchable directory of Black wellness professionals. Community Box integrates seamlessly with Squarespace websites and enables visitors to find provider information in just two clicks.
The best part? Once a directory is created inside Community Box, providers can claim and manage their own profile! The Directory team is fully volunteer, so this freed up a ton of time that they would otherwise have spent manually updating contact information, health insurance information, and services provided on hundreds of provider profiles. Sweet.
Once we had all of the content finalized and ready to go, it was time for my favorite part… designing and building their website!
Because the WNY Black Wellness Directory didn’t have its own brand, I invented one!
I used a bold, organic font for their headlines and a welcoming, easy-to-read font for paragraph text and buttons. I also used a color palette inspired by the pan-African flag. Anchored by white and black, the color palette includes a bright red, a sunny yellow, an earthy green, a silvery grey, and a moody charcoal grey. To make the colors pop, I designed an almost completely black website. I added personality with a few nifty background images and sprinkled in some subtle animations and button hover effects.
Once the branding was in place, it was time to build the website.
Perhaps the biggest challenge was the page that housed a list of local and state resources and educational glossary terms. I was able to break the information up into bite-sized, snackable chunks. To make sure it was easy to navigate, I added buttons that scrolled the visitor down to the appropriate section and then back to the top of the page.
There’s a members-only section, complete with a landing page that enables Directory members to claim and manage their listing. Members can also access a members-only events calendar and blog. Last but not least, members can use a custom contact form to submit their own blog post and upload supporting photos and documentation.
I’m thrilled with how it all came together! Check out their new website’s home page below:
