Transdiaspora Network

This weekend, TDN President/Founder Ariel Rojas had a meaningful and strategic meeting with TDN Chief Program Officer Albert Jimenez to discuss the improvement of our RIPPLE/MU2AL Program by streamlining the four modules (music, dance, storytelling, social photography) of our arts-based curriculum as a tool to expand the understanding of emotions, navigate personal/cultural identity, and build a better self-esteem. In this new phase of program development, our curriculum will also incorporate new elements of cognitive behavioral therapy that will assist our young participants to cope with difficulty situations using problem-solving skills, and to develop a greater sense of confidence in their own abilities. Whereby, they can learn to change their own thinking, problematic emotions, and behavior.

This afternoon, our President/Founder Ariel Rojas attended the in Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn. Among the elected officials were Caribbean-descendant NYC Public Advocate Jumaane Williams.

The West Indian American Day Parade is among the largest street festivals in New York City and is considered the nation's largest Caribbean cultural festival. The event is massive, with crowds estimated to be between 1 and 3 million people, making it one of the biggest festivals in the world.

International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

The transatlantic slave trade can be understood through the experiences of a single enslaved person who endured a series of catastrophic events that, by design, severed him or her from home, family, and nearly all things familiar. Capture in the African interior, transport to the coast, sale to slave traders, passage in a slave ship, and sale and enslavement in the Americas tested the spirit and will of resilient men, women, and children who struggled to find meaning and happiness in a New World dependent upon their labor and coercion.

The transatlantic slave trade can also be understood through its sheer magnitude: for 366 years, European slavers loaded approximately 12.5 million Africans onto Atlantic slave ships. About 11 million survived the Middle Passage to landfall and life in the Americas.

Photo: Permanent memorial at the United Nations in acknowledgement of the tragedy and in consideration of the legacy of slavery and the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Today, it marks the 7th anniversary of Kofi Annan's death. He will be remembered for the way he drew attention, over and over again, to the plight of those caught up in war, environmental disaster, or simply grinding poverty. Quietly, but firmly, Kofi Annan reminded world leaders, however powerful, that they needed to put their duty to their citizens above their political careers.

He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001 for helping to revitalise the international body, during a period that coincided with the Iraq War and the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Former US President Barack Obama, the first African American to win the White House, said: "Long after he had broken barriers, Kofi never stopped his pursuit of a better world."

The Ghanaian national served as United Nations Chief from 1997 to 2006 and is the only black African ever to hold the post.