The P.A.L Project
I am Yayra Tamakloe, the founder of The P.A.L Project. I am an iron-willed woman passionate about humanity and solving its problems at the core by imploring sustainable and long term solutions.
I have a BFA from the College of Arts at Kent State University with multiple directing and performance as well as leadership and scholarly experiences. Some of these include being Senator for the College of the Arts, the president of the African Students Association as well as a McNair Alum.
I consider myself a storyteller as most of my work is geared towards addressing or representing different social occurrences or cultures either in an academic or artistic way. As a black woman from Ghana living in the diaspora, I believe it is imperative to restructure the African narrative by telling it from the Africans perspective and the P.A.L Project is one way I plan to achieve this.
Many indigenous cultures face the risk of extinction due to poor or no documentation and continuous cultural education.
I am proposing the P.A.L Project which will collect, house and make accessible cultural content from the Pan-African communities around the world in an "edu-taining" way.
The P.A.L Project will be a tool to help elevate humanity; particularly people of African descent by:
Organizing, documenting and preserving Pan-African culture through folk-tales and legends.
Making cultural literacy for previously oppressed communities accessible.
Helping create a holistic sense of identity for people of African descent by making cultural education possible.
Creating a global sense of community within Africa and the diaspora
Preventing misrepresentation of cultures across the Pan-African community thus empathy, understanding and unity.
Giving black children role models with whom they can identify with culturally thus promote black pride.
There is very limited availability to cultural education. Particularly for people of African descent due to a lack of properly documented and easily accessible cultural content.
As a person born in Africa living in America, I see this problem in both worlds and people from other Pan-African communities; with whom I have communication, have expressed similar concerns.
Many countries that used to be western colonies still use western systems of education which have limited information about the cultures of the people they are supposed to serve.
Black people in western communities; who are most likely the minority, are educated within systems that do not provide adequate resources to cater to their specific cultural needs.
Some of the contributing factors to this problem include colonization and slavery which forced many black people to assimilate to western systems in order to survive.
According to the USA census bureau, 13.4% of the 300+million people in America as of 2019 identify as black. That number plus the 1+ billion Africans on the continent of Africa and the rest of our brothers and sisters in the rest of the diaspora are affected by this problem with the most highly impacted being the black child.
The P.A.L Project (Pan African Library) is a project that strives to promote cultural literacy for people of African descent. P.A.L is not just a project, it is a movement with the purpose to collect, curate and share Pan-African cultures with the world; particularly the Pan-African community, cultural content from the diverse black populations of the world.
Africans have used audio-visual media throughout our history. This means most of our history has been recorded in our music, languages, poetry, adages, proverbs etc(audio) and dance, drumming, dress etc (visual). Historical occurrences such as colonization and slavery have stripped many of their cultural legacies.
Nonetheless some components of these cultures still exist, and with the technological age, it is imperative that accessibility be associated with technology. By digitizing cultural and artistic artifacts (stories, dance, poetry, proverbs/fables, etc) in an educational, accurate yet informative way and through the use of web domains, apps and other forms of media, the project will make cultural content easily accessible to black people all over the world. Thus enabling the preservation of what is left of black culture worldwide while encouraging global education within the Pan-African community and the world as a whole.
One of the pressing concerns parents of black children have is the limited availability of resources that black children can relate to. Therefore children of African Descent, will benefit in the following ways.
Introduction to cultural elements such as languages, to help reinforce cultural education
Exposure to cultures of other Pan-African communities thus encouraging global education.
Access to role models through folkloric characters, to whom children can identify both in culture and in color.
The oversaturation of western ideals in Pan-African communities has made it difficult for many black people to feel confident about their cultural literacy. The P.A.L Project will help by:
Providing mainstream access to documented cultural and historical information.
Providing education on pre-slavery and pre-colonial black history embodied in folklores and legends to enable an embodiment of confidence and historical pride.
Helping to facilitate unity and cross-cultural communication on the basis of empathy and understanding within the Pan-African community
Contributing to the healing from the PTSD that affects us as people of African descent from events like slavery and colonization by giving access to stories prior to those events.
Using culture to facilitate job creation within communities by hiring talents and using local media to share project.
- Elevating understanding of and between people through changing people’s attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors
Black communities are the most underserved population. "..the world is far from giving all people and groups the same opportunity to live a healthy and prosperous life" (UN World Social Report 2020).
Understanding the culture of different populations gives an understanding to why they are the way they are which in turn helps build respect-based.
By making Pan-African cultural content accessible, more awareness is brought to the education needed to holistically understand and respect the Pan-African community. There can only be progress when there is education and adjustments to self. Until then we don't know what we don't know.
I have always been frustrated with the unavailability of properly documented African cultural content in mainstream media. There were times i went to local public libraries to find books on Cheikh Anta Diop only to be told they had none. I tolerated this because I figured I could manage to use the marginal information I found online however the tipping point for this project occurred when I was preparing in fall of 2018 to audition for an MFA program in New York.
The literature I planned to use was written in Krio (a language spoken in parts of Western Africa). I could somewhat understand Krio but I was not literate enough to read it easily so I searched online for an audio or visual version of the story but found none.
I went on a searching spree to find properly documented African stories and the result was not encouraging. It got worse when I began to search for pre-colonial African stories and that is when I decided something needed to be done about it. I discussed it with some of my mentors in school who also expressed their disappointment in the lack of culturally uplifting pre-colonial black content.
When history is not passed on and is not well documented, it dies with the people. To let that happen to what remains of the history of Africa and the diaspora will be cultural suicide. Very little is made widely available about pre-colonial Africa and it's imperative that what is left is preserved for a people who lose their culture, have lost their sense of self.
I am an African woman of the Anlo-Ewe tribe yet all I know of my people are text book versions which do my culture no justice. In school, we would get penalized for speaking native languages. I am not proficient in my mother tongue and I fear I'll have nothing culturally to give my children. I want to fix that!
The PAL project is one way to bring culture to the forefront for black people worldwide. Globally, we live within a very westernized system yet I believe people do not need to “dig” to learn about their culture and different cultures that relate their holistic identity. But most importantly, The P.A.L project wants to ensure the new generation of black and brown children have an “edu-taining” way of learning about themselves through their culture.
Many people have visions but there is a great difference between dreamers and doers. I fall into the later category and I confidently say this because the things I put my mind to, get done with distinction.
I am a visionary who puts in the work to bring to fruition things people do not see. I have a trail of evidence which includes starting the now 5 yrs running FOA(Face Of Africa) Pageant at Kent State University as a way to celebrate the African culture in the Kent community. I also created the annual student-centered survey for the College of Arts when I was senator. I am the first fashion student to get a $2000 grant to produce and direct an original play on sexual abuse in the school of theatre.
These are a few examples I give to show my habit of going against the grain. As an artist, an activist, a leader, a black woman, immigrant and a scholar, I always have to think outside the box to represent these parts of me accordingly.
I am certain many people do not think of cultural literacy as an avenue that needs exploring however, I see the endless opportunities as well as the positive domino effect embarking on this project will have for not just black people, but the world. I belong to the group of people I am trying to help and I see beyond the obvious therefore this puts me in the position to deliver this project efficiently.
A big component of The P.A.L Project is authentic storytelling. There has to always be an accurate and respectful representation of communities if it is to be done. Knowing this, my mentor and I decided it would be a good idea to start telling folktales from my Ghanaian culture.
My first session was with kids and it was successful however a day to my second session, institutions in the state of Ohio shut down due to the Covid-19 pandemic. I met up with the director of the children's library at Kent State to use the empty space but I was refused.
Desperately I went to the children's wing of a public library that day, and they allowed me to use their space. I knew I had to record enough content to last a while so without an audience, I set up a camera and recorded some stories. I did same the next day which was also the day the public library shut down.
I am glad to however say I got more content recorded that day and through collaborations, I have managed to have more than enough diversified content to release every single week, representing the diversity in black culture.
In November 2019, I was honored to represent Ghana in the annual Miss Africa USA pageant with 16 other intelligent young women. The categories for the pageant were as follows, the opening number, introduction, cultural showcase, parade of nations and evening wear. We were expected to arrive at our location with everything we needed to compete.
One contestant who had ordered her costume had not received it a day to the pageant even though her tracking number said it had been delivered. Feeling distraught she did not know what to do so after talking to her to inquire about the details of the garment, I suggested to the rest of the ladies that we contribute about $5 each so i could make a run to the fabric store to buy some fabric which they happily obliged to.
I pencilled down a design for the lady, she liked it and I put my design skills to use by pulling an all-nighter the eve of the pageant to construct a new costume for her from scratch. “No sister left behind” was our mantra and with the help of the other contestants, I led us to make sure we had our sisters back!
- Other, including part of a larger organization (please explain below)
This grassroots organization is currently in the process of determining the best and most appropriate organizational structure.