AYA Educational Institute

Growing Trust Trust is the operative word for a Building Love. . The operative skill is how to build trust when distrust is induced? Oppression induces us to distrust ourselves and each other. It’s like learning to grow food in a torrential rain. Conventional growing wisdom is not enough. However, the skill of AYA’s 2017 Black Love Building Honorees is more than sufficient. The honorees are: Brother Wade and Sister Monica Muhammad Brother Wade and Sister Monica Muhammad have cut a new path through a thicket of obstacles. They have been growing their love in this torrent of oppression for nearly 28 years. This year, they will celebrate their 25th anniversary and they will celebrate their children: 5 girls, 2 boys and their “bonus” sons and daughters: Ayanna and bonus son - Jeff  Aisha and bonus son - George  Amiynah and our bonus son - Jamar Horace Emmanuel Zuheerah  Tynnetta For them, nation-building is family building. It is at the center of their buil...

Young Love in a Bowl, or Two New love (and young love) is awkward. It has incredible highs and lows as bottomless as the ocean. Young love is vulnerable love, especially in this oppressive environment which uses individualism, self-blame, induced identity confusion, the superior/inferior line, and more to thwart its journey to maturity. With all that and more, young love is our only hope. We embrace it and surround it with support and protection. To that end, it's with great pleasure that we announce AYA's  2017 Black Love Young Love Honorees: Ruby and Tenisio Seanima They have been building together for 8 years and married for 4. They have been fruitful  - Fasola, Kwame, Malik are a testament to that. They have been fruitful in the community as well. They both attend to our community's health in different and complimentary ways. Tenisio is an agrarian. He cultivates the land and advocates for Black farmers – urban and rural. He’s a disc jockey and audiop...

Seek Tyehimba Love. Send a Tyehimba card.  AYA's Black Love awards are not popularity contests.  To get your hands on one of these, you have to earn it. Black love is in need of love today. We need real Black-Afrikan relationship-building, family building, nation building love. Tyehimba love is the kind of love that you'll fight for, and it's the kind that will help you fight against anything that threatens your love or our people. It's a laughing, crying, on the beach and in th e trenches kind of love. It's an ancient Afrikan love from the beginning of time that responds to the urgency of now - recreating itself - changing while staying the same. It's a healing love - one that soothes the wounds born of oppression, one that nurtures a confident and creative hand as you seek to heal family or build an organization or business. It's a Black love that also stiffens your back as you face the winds of resistance and days of loneliness th...

 Ours is a daily, yet protracted challenge. We are at war. To make revolution we need revolutionary love.  Revolutionary love nurtures warriors, nurtures healers, and nurtures builders.  Drum roll please ... the selection for the 2017 BLC Revolutionary Long Love award has been made. And the winning couple is - Yaa Mawusi Baru ti and Mwalimu K. Bomani Baruti - the co-founders of Akoben House and Akoben Institute. Choosing from among deserving couples was a labor of love. We hope that you'll come out to celebrate and be inspired by this couple's revolutionary love. Here's just a snippet. This Revolutionary Love couple has been married for over 30 years. While they were attracted to each other physically, what makes their love revolutionary is that it was built on their common and unwavering love for our people and their determination to make revolutionary change for our people - in their life times. Their search for knowledge of Ourstory became mo...

Come celebrate love kissed by the ancestors and wrapped in service to the family, the community, our people and our war against white-supremacy, for self-determination, and sovereignty. AYA's Black Love Celebration  honoree for Ancestral Love has been chosen.  We are pleased to honor The ancestor - freedom fighter,  Iyalosha Fulani Nandi Adegbalola Sunni-Ali. S ister Fulani Sunni Ali.  Iya Fulani has been described as,   “ A Revolutionary Black Female Nationalist /Republic of New Afrika” This is what makes AYA's Black Love Celebration special - we celebrate 360 degrees of Black Love. Unless your romantic love is kissed by the ancestors, it is "alien love." If enemies of our people define your romantic love, define "what turns you on," then the foundation of family and the foundation of the nation is destroyed. From her early years she was a citizen of the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Africa which has sought to create...

Author: Wekesa Madzimoyo This image was a part of a FB post and article:  A Picture Of Language: The Fading Art Of Diagramming Sentences .  Here are some of the FB comments: I remember diagramming sentences in school and really loved doing it on the blackboard and finding the placement of every word in the sentence. Oh! what a wonderfully thrilling challenge and I usually got them correct." "Wish they still taught it in school." I'm convinced this is at least part of the reason today so many people can't write or use proper grammar." I certainly do remember doing this! Loved it! Certainly, many enjoy misty-eyed memories of English instruction. If that's your lot, I'm glad that you had instructors, families, and/or situations that foster great memories. I must mourn. While some saw us diagramming sentences, I felt that we were dissecting and alienating souls. Part of my "not knowing, or "not caring" about "proper...