AYA Educational Institute

Want to take charge of your life? Throw out the ghostwriter. Here's an AYA  maxim: Authenticity > Authorship > Authority.  When we are emotionally authentic, we are writing, creating the story of our lives and relationships. When we write/create the story, then we become the authorities in and over our lives. On the other hand, when we are emotionally inauthentic, (numb to what we are feeling - all of what we're feeling, or when we're not true to what we're feeling) the story of our lives and relationships (intimate, familial, organizational, or business) is being written and directed by the ghostwriter - the person or group that has written, and implanted the "script" for our inauthenticity.  Who's writing your story, pullin' your relationship strings.  Why, when closest to success, does our communication turn to conflict, and trust erodes or explodes? It's the ghostwriter. You've heard it before - "change yo...

Some are elated, some irritated, some outright insulted about the announced Tubman/Jackson $20. Regardless of your position, we have an obligation to control the narrative. The power is in the story! Will her image evoke our commitment to collective freedom? Will it inspire us to heal, build & fight against real oppression today, or induce us to bask in the illusion of inclusion? It’s really up to us. Come. Learn.  Join the national movement to tell her story from the inside-out! Did you know her first attempted escape was with her two brothers? Did you even know that she was from a revolutionary family?  What about her 4-staged spiritual development that supported her revolutionary work? We’ll look at her story through the eyes of AYA’s WHB model. We’ll especially lean on the new SIO model. So we learn to tell her story and OurStory from the inside-out, to flip-the script! Register Araminta - WHB Storyteller Certification Begining Tr...

Help us end the school year with a bang. Help us prepare for next year and provide scholarships to families for our full-day and weekend support African-Centered educational programs.  Tickets Here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ayas-circle-of-culture-concert-tickets-24958216698 AYA doesn't only support our youth, it supports the community in a number of ways. *  Justice@Home *  Relationship Counseling *  Healing Oppressions Wounds Retreats *  Uhuru Esusu - Home-Buying Collective *  and more... Rarely do we ask. We're asking now, not because we're about to close or are over our heads in debt. We're asking so we can expand, can grow, can offer more services to more of our community at a time when our community is being squeezed. It's also the time when our community needs us the most. But you know we can take without giving. You and the community will have a wonderful time. All the way from Philly, Kala Jojo is a Blac...

Time to breathe. Life is a circle. Time to celebrate Chisulu (Cornell Geddie, Jr.) - the man from whose seed I came. He's the man who most showed me how to be a man. And while he wouldn't have known to call it this - the man who most showed me how to "be Afrikan" - hold Afrikan values, hold Afrikan visions and make a circle of community. I say "most" because I was raised in a community of men - my second Dad - Garrie Wright, my grandfathers, and even great grand fathers, uncles, great uncles, cousins and male family friends so close that they were called "uncles." To all of these men, I'm deeply indebted. Shout out to my mom for keeping me in this community of men, even during our time in Brooklyn, NY - 500 miles removed from my father who was in Fayetteville, NC. April 20, 1931 is the day he came into this world. His father and mother merged to become him. He and my mother merged to become me. I extend myself into my childre...

I Love AYA! That was this morning’s focus in this dynamic class - The Economic Conundrum. Was it too deep for Monday morning; too deep for mere high school students?  I've written about the course before - AYA High School students are learning about our Circle of Culture and how we used it to heal us. They are studying this in an economics class because they know that we had to have healed ourselves for us to have displayed such economic cooperation and economic nationalism in many places in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries in places like Memphis, Atlanta, Rosewood, and in the better known Black Wall Streets - in Tulsa, OK and the Hayti District in Durham, NC.  I decided to include in their search for *HOW* we used our culture to heal - a discussion of role of resistance, rebellion, and revolt (individual, group, and mass action) against White domination as a strategic and effective healing "treatment" for the psychic injuries resulting from the woundin...

A social media friend and powerful Black community activist - whom I respect - posted a "resurrection" picture and a pray today. She ask's for Amen! If we believe it is a powerful symbol. Here is my response. Please take a minute to read beyond the first paragraph. It is not an attack. I responded out of love and connection. Amen! It is a powerful symbol of white supremacy that America has been praying to since its inception and Europeans have been using since Constantine in 325 AD. Whites from the Klan to the Presidency to the Military have been inspired by this symbol to invade, kill, capture, and dominate and abuse us. We - Black people - infused the symbol with African spiritual (not religious) meanings and ideas of unconditional love, righteousness, authenticity, the one-ness of humanity, etc. This is what we wish that they'd pray to get filled with. I get that, and wish the same too. The symbol/story for them is a tool of domination. For America (and E...