The Bruce Grove Youth Centre, 10 Bruce Grove, Tottenham, London N17 6RA From 11.00am Saturday 7th August 2010

11.00am Doors Open 11.45am Introduction and Compare Nubian Jak 12.00pm-12.30pm The Importance of Education - Paul Obinna Education is a tool for survival and pivotal in shaping children’s and adolescent’s views and perspectives of the world, as well as their past, current and future roles within it. Although education is life long it is the early years that prove the most fundamental in determining how a child will develop and the identity they will shape. Based on our global realities, sole dependence on what is considered mainstream education is a detriment to the African child who is ‘institutionally’ educated away from them self within it. Racial awareness must be fostered whereby a complete African identity includes not only ‘good grades’ with ‘good job prospects’, but also an understanding of our global realities, as well as the tools, the willingness and the ability to change them. 12.30pm-1.00pm Self-awareness, Self-love and the Black child - Des Robinson To lack self-awareness is to be uncertain. To lack self-love is to succumb to self-hate. Stereotyped, misrepresented, denied access to accurate modes of African self-expression - ‘our child’ is starved of figures of worth or admiration. Tainted, they’re reared in a construct, whereby the very essence of what they are is universally debased. This is the reality for the black child. The role of the child is to reflect what is given to them - this must include self-awareness, this must be bound in self-love. Each facilitates the other. They are the root of self-worth and self-esteem; the keys to broader community survival and responsibilities. To know yourself is to understand that your own survival is ultimately determined by the survival of your community. 1.00pm-1.30pm National Association of Black Supplementary Schools - Nia Imara (NABSS) Kenyetta Imara 1.30pm-2.30pm Break 2.30pm-3.00pm Parental Responsibility - Paulette Douglas What is the role of a parent? We can easily answer this question: to nurture, instil the tools of survival, educate and love. They say a fruit does not fall far from the tree. Therefore we can look at our children and see who we are and what we have instilled in them. Some of us feel that the problems in our community are not ‘ours’, reprieve if we can say, ‘my child is not like that’. Yet the measure of the African child’s success must be greater than; the police don’t knock on our door; our child is well behaved; they get ‘good’ grades; they got into college. Their world, which ‘we’ve’ brought them into is larger than this. The problems they face are wider, and deeper. The bar must be raised. To parent is to guide, so the child can navigate, therefore ‘we’ must understand the terrain. It is to reflect so the child can best mirror, therefore we must aspire to be what we want to see in them. We have surrendered to the desires our children are conditioned to want and continuously fail to secure for their future survival needs. No longer can we ignore the village, no longer can we ignore the raising of the child. 3.00pm-3.30pm The Behaviour of our Children and Youth - Twilight Bey We must stop saying that ‘my child is not like that’. The media portrays our children in a very specific way; as gang members; to be feared; ignorant; limited with narrowly defined potential. Young people are very receptive to what they see and hear, as their role is to reflect the image that they are given. Other people are defining our community and we are accepting it as being so. This portrayal of a so called ‘Black culture/ urban image’ is a self-destructive one that is ripping through our communities. Internalized; instinctively our children replicate these behaviours; the inadequacies, the self-destruction; the self-hate, the gender confusion. The portrayal has become a prophecy self-fulfilled. Normalized, it is then greeted with our collective silence, it goes unchallenged and it goes unquestioned. 3.30pm-4.00pm The Future of the Black Child - Andrew Muhammad (replaces Bro Anderw Muhammad) There has to be drastic action taken now to limit the damage that is taking place. At this juncture our children’s standards, objectives, goals, aims and aspirations are low, narrowly defined and limited. To continue on this road there’s a generation of footballers, athletes, gangsters and minstrels that awaits. For the generations thereafter the options will be limited further still. Anaesthetized, our children have been dumbed down. Right now they’re resigned to the only institutions that are willing to invest in them: prisons, young offenders institutes, mental institutions and special needs schools to name but a few. These institutions have unlimited capacity and a policy of open doors. So what future are we expecting? How much longer will we forego on our responsibility - if not us then who? 4.00pm-5.00pm Black Supplementary School Presentations and Showcases