African Culture Appreciation

Hello I am Daeja Richardson a current freshman at Science Leadership Academy. For the You and The World I chose to speak on African Culture Appreciation in Philadelphia. As you may know in New York they have Carnival which as plenty of people celebrating and participating in that event. In Philadelphia we have Odunde. Yet we need to expand on the population for this event so everyone can be appreciated. This topic is very passionate to me because I have family that feel like our culture should be valued more. With that I chose a topic that affected my family and I.

The Odunde Festival is an event that brings the African and Caribbean feel to Philadelphia. This event takes place in South Philadelphia every year around the middle of June. This year it will be celebrating its 41st year in running.. The festival takes up twelve city blocks with multiple vendors and other entertainment . The vendors provide plenty of artifacts, jewelry, clothing, and food. When walking around you notice several dance groups. However at the main stage people perform their cultural dances and songs. Sometimes when I attend this festival I tend to notice people who are well known on television. Odunde is known for the programs they do for some communities. They provide programs for dance  and drumming classes, arts and crafts, and more. Some of these programs has had great impact in the youth.

For myself I have Jamaican and African American family so they participate in this festival every year. However people from my Jamaican side want this to be as big as Carnival in New York. They want everybody to be really valued in this event. This You & The World project is so passionate to me because I like how we as a community have a joyful way to celebrate our different cultures. Yet we still want more appreciation. I want the population to expand tremendously in Odunde. So we can be almost equivalent to Carnival. More of the youth should be apart of this event because they get to see how much of their culture they might be missing out on. They will also get to let free during the organization. The change that I am going to make is to get at least twenty five student from Science Leadership Academy to join Odunde this year on June 11th. This will be a new experience for most students. But it will be good to see more of the youth coming out to certain event such as this one.