Afrik Impact

Continued from page 5 show by Senegalese designer, Oumou Sy, and will end with a spectacular performance by singer-songwriter, Baaba Maal, known for his music on the Wakanda Forever soundtrack.

Philip Sneed, President and CEO of the Arvada Center, is also a good friend of Dia and a partner of ALG. When the two met at a dinner several years ago, they discussed the Arvada Center’s new IDEA initiative, and the facility’s efforts to focus on Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access. Sneed considered Dia’s involvement in the African immigrant community and remembers thinking, “We should not only look at the African American cultural work, but also the contributions of African immigrants and maybe the whole diaspora.”

The conversation sparked so much interest that the men traveled with their wives to Senegal earlier this year and met with

Mbagnick Ndiaye, the country’s Minister of Culture. Ndiaye suggested Baaba Mal as the concert headliner and even offered to pay for the artist and his band’s travel expenses.

Dia has hosted several events at the Arvada Center in the recent past, but Sneed says, “This by far is the biggest one.”

After the opening celebration, events will take place throughout the month, featuring the Education Forum on Thursday, Aug. 10, Business Summit on Thursday, Aug. 17, and other activities organized by partner organizations.

Afrik Impact will conclude on Saturday, Aug. 26, with the Afrik Impact Fundraising Gala, to be held at Denver Botanic Gardens’ UMB Bank Amphitheater. The theme of this year’s gala is “Breaking Barriers, Building Bridges.”

Unlike in previous years, Dia’s goal for this year’s event is to focus on representing not only the Black and African diaspora, but also cultures from all groups. The theme was sparked by an initiative created by members of ALG’s Leadership Africa Program to create a space for dialogue between African immigrants and Black Americans.

LaTerrell Bradford, team leader for the Black/African American Affinity Group and one of the founders of the Breaking Barriers initiative, explained the rationale for the innovative theme. “In the leadership cohort, we were placed in groups and we had to come up with a project, and I was the only Black American in my group. I suggested to the group that our project was breaking barriers and building bridges between African immigrants and Black Americans because there’s definitely some tension there,” Bradford explains. “I had visited Ghana three times and I’ve been to Togo and Benin; I realized that they really don’t know us and they don’t know our struggle.”

After working on the bridge between Africans and Black Americans for three years, the organization decided it was too limiting. The initiative has now been expanded to other “affinity groups” which are comprised of members from the Jewish, Indigenous American, Asian, Black, Hispanic, European, African and other communities. The collective came together to create a unity poem that will be a blend of individual poems created by each group and will be unveiled during the Afrik Impact events.

Alan Frosh, a participant of the Breaking Barriers project, president of Frosh Philanthropy Partners, member of the AntiDefamation League board of directors, and now co-owner of Tattered Cover Book Store was introduced to Dia by a friend. He was encouraged to meet the man who had learned English at the same bookstore he now owns. After meeting Dia and learning about ALG, Frosh believes the project and poem are transformational ideas.

“The work he’s doing within his own community is exceptional. This led to literally building bridges of understanding, especially in a time when we are all divided by politics, by background, by religion,” says Frosh, “A lot of people could learn from what he’s done in convening these disparate ethnicities, religions, and backgrounds together towards a very beautiful communitybuilding activity.”

The public is invited to join in the Afrik Impact celebration, take a seat at the table, and build bridges toward a more unified future..

Editor’s note: For more information or to purchase community concert tickets, visit https://arvadacenter. org/events/day-of-african-culture and/or Afrik Impact fundraising gala tickets, visit, https://usalg.org /initiatives/afrik-impact-2023/.

Eight Black-owned Local News Outlets Selected for Cohort 3 of Knight x LMA BloomLab

By LMA Staff

Since the Knight x LMA BloomLab launched in Spring 2022, the focus has been on leveraging technology to grow revenue and audience, leading to long-term sustainability. In its recent impact report, the lab reported growth of 133% in digital revenue after one year for Cohort 1, along with overall revenue growth of 21%. Last fall, eight more outlets joined the lab as Cohort 2, and their numbers are trending in a similar direction through nine months.

Local Media Foundation is excited to announce the launch of Cohort 3, consisting of eight Black-owned local news organizations:

•Denver Urban Spectrum

•Flint Beat (Michigan)

•Indianapolis Recorder

•LA Focus

•Minnesota SpokesmanRecorder

•Our Weekly (Los Angeles)

•Bay State Banner (Boston)

•The Times Weekly (Joliet, Illinois)

BloomLab and LMF leaders selected these media outlets from 25 applicants after a thor- ough review process, including a panel of outside experts and individual interviews conducted by the three BloomLab directors.

The review panelists were Dr. Paulette Brown-Hinds, publisher of Black Voice News and founder of Voice Media Ventures, and Denise Rolark Barnes, publisher of The Washington Informer, in addition to the three BloomLab directors: John Celestand, Apryl Pilolli and Robert Walker-Smith

The Knight x LMA

BloomLab is a three-year immersive experience with 26 Black-owned local media outlets, with funding of $3.2 million from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The participating organizations will receive technology grants of $50,000. The 18 publishers in Cohorts 1 and 2 will continue their work in the lab through 2024.

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