African American Holiday Association

Since 1982, Ayo Handy Kendi, realized that their needed to be a cultural and spiritual alternative to the overly-commercialized holiday season, while encouraging the African American community to use this high retail shopping season as a vehicle for self-help. Beginning with 25 vendors in 1982, she organized the first "Family Afternoon Bazaar in Washington, D.C.'s downtown Lansburg Center. This event grew in two years to be the Christmas Kwanzaa Bazaar and has continued as the African American Holiday Expo. The Expo has grown steadily over the years, outgrowing several venues, offering a selling opportunity for an estimated 2,000 merchants, artists, healers and businesses who've offered quality African-centered, merchandise, crafts, health and business services. The African American Holiday Expo, has brought together a combined estimated audience of 75,000 people over the years, and has been recognized as the oldest, east coast celebration of Christmas and Kwanzaa, spawning any number of replicas in the Washington, D.C Metropolitan area and around the Nation.

As the special event grew, it spawned an organization - the African American Holiday Association (AAHA). AAHA was incorporated in 1989, by Handy-Kendi, as an outgrowth of public interest shown in holiday related, quality of life issues and the potential for organizing for social justice using holidays, celebrations and rituals. The Expo became the annual fundraiser for the non-profit organization.

Another outgrowth of the Expo event is AAHA's YEP (Youth Entrepreneur Progect). Since its inception in the winter of 1989, YEP has used the holiday season to assist over 1000 District of Columbia youth, ages 9-21 offering them opportunities for skills and leadership development through a hands-on self help, learning and earning opportunity at the Expo. AAHA offers training and experiences to a "YouthPreneur" to market or sell their products and services through subsidized exhibit booth spaces through AAHA's fundraising and direct public donations for this activity. Other youth receive life, customer relations, entrepreneur and special events skills as Event Assistants, where youth receive payment for serving the public or by working with the adult event staff, with their earnings matched by the AAHA. This project, to this day, serves as a model for many other trade shows who have also recognized the vital need to "grow" their business leaders in the African American community through youth entrepreneurship.

In 2005, the Expo was being renamed, the MarketPlace Festival and the organization took the next growth spurt by launching The African American Holiday Expo On-Line AAHE On-Line under the same Expo slogan, "For the most positive holiday experiences ever, spend your money where it counts".

Building upon the success of the Expo, The African American Holiday Expo On-Line, will offer a virtual website experience of learning and earning that will help bridge the digital divide for African American youth and will provide self-help, economic alternatives for youth crime and violence prevention. AAHA's YEP, operated as an After-School, Rites of Passage Project, will teach youth life-skills, cultural values, computer and entrepreneur training duplicated on the virtual festival, network experience to enable youth and adult entrepreneurs to sell products and market concepts and services worldwide.

Through the use of information technology, the potential to penetrate the African American consciousness with positive values can be realized more deeply and much broader than before. AAHE On-Line will deliver a message of hope toward building strong communities and restoring the family, through presentations that demonstrate the applied application of meaningful, cultural values. Now more than ever, the African American community needs the positive values of the Nguzo Saba (7 Principles of Blackness celebrated during Kwanzaa), the 5 Principles of Black Love and the ancient Principles of Maat. Now, more than ever, these values need to be lived daily to reinforce the spiritual strength of each individual and to enhance the collective strength of a Nation, to help re-build self-esteem and pride while providing viable economic opportunities for youth in the urban cities and heartland of America that virtually offers little to no employment opportunities thus youth turn to the drug dealers and street crime bosses as the largest employers of our youth.

AAHA's YEP offers a successful track record of training youth in entrepreneurship and offering opportunities to not only learn but to earn money through our own Black culture with our own models of self-sufficiency to affect the next generation.

AAHA has served as a clearing house, over the years, providing a wealth of resource of educational information and service delivery.

AAHA NEWS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
contact Rashida Thomas, Publicist,
AAHA 202-667-2577

Organization Continues 24th Year, National Holiday Boycott to 'Spend Money Where it Counts" to Protest Federal Response to Hate Crimes

For 24 years, the African American Holiday Association (AAHA), a national, non-profit, membership organization, has declared that the biggest boycott that Black people do, is NOT spend money with themselves. AAHA's "Spend Your Money Where it Counts" slogan, is an affirmation, that we must "Buy Black", in our own communities, from Nov 15-Jan 1 to boycott corporate retail stores, gas-buying, and any participation in holiday commercialism and consumption to focus the attention on the Federal Government's responsibility to take hate crimes against People of Color more seriously. To provide alternative outlets, where Blacks can shop, AAHA's 24th Annual MarketPlace Festival and Health Fair, the oldest, East-Coast Celebration of Christmas and Kwanzaa, will be held Sa/Sun, Dec. 22 / 23 on the historic U street corridor in Washington, D. C. , again offering an African-centered, in-door, wholistic event. Featured will be over 70 merchants, craftspeople, artists, health providers and YouthPreneurs with unique gifts, family fun, health talks, and screenings for holiday stress management and culture. The event is Open to the Public with a suggested donation to support AAHA's YEP for crime & violence prevention.

"AAHA's MarketPlace Festival and Health Fair, serves as an example of Umoja, the Kwanzaa principle of cooperative economics, where the slogan, "For the Most Positive Holidays Ever - Spend Your Money Where it Counts" has been demonstrated annually. We are only one of many such cultural holiday MarketPlaces or craftshows, nationwide, which have been designed to provide opportunities to spend at least 51% of Black dollars in our own community first, to recycle Black resources, create jobs, opportunities, and grow our entrepreneurs, as other communities do. At Christmas, when the gross-national product is dependent on the boost of holiday sales at the end of the year, this is also a vulnerable time, as Black America is demanding justice from hate crimes- nooses being hung all over the Nation, not just Jena; police killings of young black men in N.Y, D. C. and Atlanta; the brutal white attack against Megan Williams in West Virginia and on and on. This Nation needs to know, that the consumer buying power of African-Americans CAN be directed towards those who respect us", stated Ayo Handy-Kendi, founder/director of AAHA, founder of Black Love Day, and a certified, wholistic practitioner focused on breathwork for stress management to end disparities of health created by racisim, violence and Black self-hatred.

AAHA's Youth Entrepreneur Project (YEP) is the hallmark of the festival, offering youth a learning and earning opportunity as YouthPreneurs, event assistants and performers at the MarketPlace. Since 1989, this activity has supported and trained over 1500 youth, aged 9 - 21, who earn their own money and gain leadership skills, as an alternative crime and violence prevention experience during the time of the year where crime and violence increases by 50% with youth beyond the Toys for Tots age-range but prime for the age where Black youth are being criminalized. AAHA seeks community support, funders and are a part of the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC #29586) encouraging partners to " help youth, help themselves" bringing real peace on earth and in the hood.

For technical assistance in setting up a local MarketPlace, a youth entrepreneur project, for Kwanzaa Storytelling, Kwanzaa displays, cultural holiday consultations, for holiday stress management or other cultural holiday support especially regarding, "The Spend Your Money Where it Counts", boycott, contact, The African American Holiday Association (AAHA) at 202-667-2577 or www.aaha-info.org PEACE ###

AAHA HOLIDAY EVENTS UNIFY THE AFRICAN DIASPORA AFTER TURBULENT YEAR

In the tradition of Kwanzaa in-gatherings to celebrate the “fruits of our labor”, this years’ African American Holiday Association (AAHA) is encouraging Black communities to celebrate our positive response to the challenges of man-made and natural disasters, i.e., record storms, mudslides, earthquakes, droughts, HIV/AIDS, terrorist attacks, racism and poverty, by recognizing our collective efforts and furthering our unity as the healing connection for the African Diaspora after a turbulent year. Highlights of this year’s activities include the December 1st, Retail Call to Action Boycott / Buy Black Campaign; the premiere of founder, Ayo Handy Kendi’s play, “A Day of Withdrawal” on Sat, Dec. 3rd at Sweet Mangos Café, 3701 New Hampshire Ave, N.W, Washington, D. C.; the global launching of African American Holiday Expo on-line, www.aaha-info.org; the 8 week, after-school, training expansion of AAHA’s YEP (Youth Entrepreneur Project) for learning and earning at NDC #1/UPO Center; and the 22nd Annual MarketPlace Festival, December 17th at the Reeves Center, 14 and U Streets, N.W., on the historic U Street corridor where the raising of the largest, “Gye Nyame” Flag will serve as a spiritual banner to reconnect the Diaspora for better cooperation, reconciliation and healing.

Internationally, Renown as Mama Ayo –the Kwanzaa Griot, the veteran activist, writer, breath facilitator, cultural authority and founder/director of the African American Holiday Association (AAHA) and Black Love Day, chose to publish “A Day of Withdrawal” at the end of November, 2005, to reinforce a next-level, action step beyond event-style organizing or mass-gathering protest marches, in the wake of the governments’ non-response to Hurricane Katrina survivors, the mounting outcry for Iraq War troop withdrawals and the increased demand for quality of life in the USA and around the globe. To reconnect the African Diaspora after such a trying year, she stated, “AAHA’s 3rd call to boycott the retail holiday industry to Buy Black by “spending our money where it counts”, is designed to wake up many citizens to the fact that power will never be abdicated unless taken and what gives us power is our withholding our consumer dollars and our very labor which fuels this machine to operate against and exploit its most valuable resources – its people. When we stop spending our money, stop working, turn off the t.v.’s, turn-off period -- we the people will be taken seriously.” For our own self-determination as an inter-connected community, AAHA’s Kwanzaa Relief Efforts at all venues, will collect items, canned goods, clean clothing, and educational supplies for Hurricane Katrina and Pakistan earthquake survivors and for Benin, West Africa and D.C.’s poor and homeless.

AAHA further joins the “cyber-shopping” revolution with the launching of the African American Holiday Expo On-Line, however, from a self-help, African Diaspora perspective. Youth, ages 9-21, will be trained in e-commerce sales and IT production techniques along with special events exhibiting skills, promotions, ethics and leadership in a 8 weeks expanded youth entrepreneur training project. Since 1989, over 1,000 youth have participated in AAHA’s YEP with its learning and earning opportunity at its annual MarketPlace Festival as an alternative to crime and violence prevention. This years Metro-wide, MarketPlace Festival will offer on-the-job-training for 30 youths to have vending booths alongside the 70 adult merchants. Youths while also gain event production experience and exposure to African-centered culture. The On-Line experience will continue to help grow the business leaders of the future by web-casting the conscious-raising festival globally.

For further info on obtaining the rights to present the play/reading, or to request a script or literary manuscript published by Earth Love Tune-Up Crew, LLC view www.adayofwithdrawal.com. Play scripts or manuscript copies can also be mailed to you by writing Ayo Handy Kendi, 1855 Third ST NW, Washington, D. C. 20001, Phone: 202-667-2577 . For interviews of the author or for further information on the African American Holiday Association’s MarketPlace Festival on On-Line Expo please contact, Rashida Thomas, 202-667-2577 or view www.aaha-info.org.