Feat. Jeff Dass, Ibi Zoboi, and
East Harlem Poets Collective
April 6, 2024
12 - 6 p.m.
CCCADI 120 E 125th Street NY, NY 10035
Free (Space is limited) RSVP
WORKSHOPS
“I AM” Poetry Workshop by Jeff Dess
This session will be a poetic storytelling writing experience to help children and families learn about themselves and express their thoughts on their culture and/or neighborhoods. Participants will use haiku poems and ‘I Am’ poems as the vehicle of expression.
“Writing Home” by Ibi Zoboi
This workshop will lead participants in exploring: How do we make a setting, home, city, and country feel like the main character in our stories? Participants will be guided through what it means to write home--grounding our stories in our communities' smells, sounds, and colors to bring them to life and make them breathing and speaking characters while infusing cultural and political dynamics that shape how we view our homes.
“Poetry & Liberation” by Stephanie Pacheco (East Harlem Poets Collective)
In this session, families will use the written and spoken word alongside the radical act of dreaming to envision and take action towards a just world.
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Jeff Dess
Jeff Dess is an award winning educator, best selling author and notable public speaker who specializes in the areas of Learning and Development and culturally responsive education.
He is the Co-Founder of Trill or Not Trill – the disruptive educational firm and leadership institute renowned for its culturally responsive tactics and strategies in connecting with today’s youth and training leaders of the modern workforce. As a public speaker and facilitator Jeff has reached over 100,000 learners ranging from colleges, universities, corporate and governmental spaces.
Jeff is an author of seven books.Written with his Trill or Not Trill Co-Founder, Lenny A Williams, the text We Wear Kicks to Works is an Amazon best seller. He currently serves as the Director of Leadership & Engagement at New Jersey City University.
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Ibi Zoboi
Ibi Zoboi is the New York Times Bestselling author of American Street, a National Book Award finalist, Pride, a contemporary remix of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and a middle-grade debut, My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich. She is the editor of Black Enough: Stories of Being Young and Black in America. She co-authored the Walter Award and L.A. Times Book Prize-winning novel-in-verse, Punching the Air, with Exonerated Five member, Yusef Salaam. Her debut picture book, The People Remember, received a Coretta Scott King Honor Award.
Her most recent books include Star Child: A Biographical Constellation of Octavia Estelle Butler, Okoye to the People: A Black Panther Novel for Marvel, and Nigeria Jones. Ibi lives in New Jersey with her husband, a high school art teacher, and their three teenage children.
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Stephanie Pacheco
Stephanie Pacheco is the 2023 New York City Youth Poet Laureate and the Inaugural New York State Youth Poet Laureate. She was also a member of the 2022 New York City Youth Slam Team, with Urban Word NYC. Hailing from the Bronx, she has been a leading organizer and strategist with several activist organizations, including the Healing Centered Schools Task Force, working to mobilize youth across the city against educational injustice. She is a recipient of the 2021 Princeton Prize in Race Relations. Her advocacy and poetry have been highlighted by the New York Times, The Today Show, NPR, The Daily News, CBS, and other publications.
She has spoken and performed in several spaces such as the Schomburg Center, the Apollo Theater, TedXCUNY, and more.
This Sou Sou! Saturdays event celebrates the legacy and culture of Haiti and is part of our yearlong effort, Lakay se Lakay, which translates to Home is Home in Haitian Kreyòl. Lakay se Lakay uplifts Haiti, Our Black Nation, using the lens of Haitian arts and scholarship. Through Lakay se Lakay, we at CCCADI explore home as a space for refuge, building family and community, preservation of traditions, a foundation for cultivating joy, and the roots of sovereignty.
You can support this work by making a donation to CCCADI. Help us advance Pan-Caribbean and Pan-African connections so that together we may build a brighter AfroFuture.
SOUSOU! SATURDAYS
A FAMILY-BASED ART EDUCATION PROGRAM
Inspired by the financial resource-sharing traditions known throughout the African Diaspora by such names as "Colecta", "Box Hand", "San", "Partna", or "Sou-Sou", this family-based art and education program reinterprets Sou Sou as an exchange of cultural resources.
Sou Sou! Saturdays celebrates and honors our connections by upholding our traditions of collective growth, mindfulness, celebration, and creativity with families of all ages.
Be sure to join us on April 6th!
Sou Sou! Saturdays is part of the CCCADI Youth Pathways program which provides opportunities for Black and Brown youth to experience active community engagement and advocacy, cultural empowerment and enrichment, and a connection to a larger global movement. Our youth are leaders, and we seek to amplify their voices and vision for meaningful and impactful social change. Youth Pathways offers three avenues for cultural youth development.
