ABSTRACT Ujima – a Swahili word meaning “collective work and responsibility” to build and maintain community, solving problems together – exemplifies the primary mission of the proposed research training program. The proposed NIMH AIDS Research Centers (ARC) Ujima Mentoring Program (Ujima Program) will develop and support early career investigators who focus their programs of research on high priority areas that address HIV/AIDS treatment, prevention, and care in Black/African American (hereafter Black) communities. While accounting for 13% of the US population in 2018, Black people represented 42% of the new HIV diagnoses among adolescent and adults in the US and territories. Furthermore, Black scientists face specific challenges in obtaining research funding, securing appropriate mentoring, sustaining their programs of research, and continuing in the research pipeline. Thus, the Ujima Program has a primary focus on reducing HIV-related health disparities in Black communities and the development of early career investigators, particularly those at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), who can competently establish mutually beneficial partnerships with Black communities to conduct high-impact HIV/AIDS research. To accomplish this goal, Ujima Program leadership will conduct outreach to faculty and administrators of HBCUs and other NIMH- funded ARCs to promote the program, recruit HBCU and ARC scientists to serve on the steering committee and will identify and link program participants to potential ARC mentors. Program participants will form a Ujima research team to support their research to address HIV/AIDS in Black communities. The teams will consist of the program participant (scholar), a senior faculty mentor affiliated with a NIMH-funded ARCs (ARC mentor), and a mentor from the scholar’s home or similar institution (local mentor). The program will provide ongoing support to Ujima research teams through quarterly webinars, monthly check-in calls, annual workshops, and research funding. Through these activities, the Ujima Program will provide critical multidisciplinary mentoring and research training for early-stage scientists, particularly those at HBCUs, who are best equipped to undertake high-impact research to address HIV-related health inequities in Black communities.