Los Gatos nonprofit celebrates ‘HUEmankind’ with festival.
A Los Gatos nonprofit is hosting a festival Saturday and Sunday focusing on the importance of understanding the cultures and histories of the people who make up the South Bay.
The newly formed nonprofit AWO is putting on the inaugural HUEmankind Fest. The nonprofit gets its name from Nigeria’s Yoruba language — awo means both “skin” and “color” — and aims to get people talking about intersectionality. The organization creates educational tools and programs to help build people’s understanding of the way race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and culture affect the lives of South Bay residents.
The event, sponsored by Santa Clara County, will be virtual in its first year, but organizers are planning for a live event in 2022.
AWO’s founder and executive director Folake Phillips relocated to the United States from Nigeria in 2017. She said she was spurred to create the festival following the police killing of George Floyd. “It changed so many things, in terms of understanding the deeper civic issues within the American society,” she added.
Phillips said when she came to the U.S., she knew about the Fourth of July and about Thanksgiving, with its fraught history. But it wasn’t until recently that she learned about Juneteenth, the day that commemorates the end of chattel slavery in the U.S. She decided part of her nonprofit’s mission would be to call attention to the anniversary.
“I was really shocked that something so instrumental and critical to bringing people together wasn’t known by me,” Phillips said.
As a Los Gatos resident, Phillips said she’s excited about starting this event in her own backyard.
“I live in a community where most people want to learn,” Phillips said. “So, we’re learning together.”
The event will kick off Saturday at 10 a.m. with headliner Tyson Amir. Amir is an activist who grew up in San Jose, and he said it’s particularly important that conversations about race and equitable access happen in the South Bay.
“San Jose needs a lot of help,” Amir added. “So for us, as people, we’ll be able to see the importance of coming together and supporting one another, learning from each other and fighting for that common struggle. It’s extremely important.”
As more wealth flows into the South Bay via the tech industry, Amir said, it’s critical to have conversations about equity.
“Who gets to define what fair and equitable is needs to be to communities who have been marginalized by the existing system instead of that system trying to define it for them,” Amir said.
In addition to Amir, the opening events will also
include African American poet Richard Ezeagwu Akinyemi and a host of other artists and speakers. Saturday afternoon, the festival will hold a workshop specifically for children and their families. Attendees will hear traditional stories from the African continent.
On Sunday, the festival will hold a Social Justice Hackathon, borrowing its form from Silicon Valley’s tech world. During a hackathon, participants brainstorm solutions to a particular problem. During Sunday’s event, attendees will work to come up with solutions to everyday microaggressions faced by residents of color, particularly Black residents.
“Basically, it’s us equipping local neighborhoods and communities with the opportunity to be involved in real action, the opportunity to learn to self-reflect, to be self-aware and share this knowledge,” Phillips said.
Before Phillips started AWO, she was in the process of bringing her business over from Nigeria. There, she ran a business called HOTH-Hands of the Hinterland, which made handcrafted luxury bags. Now, 20% of the proceeds from the bag sales go to her nonprofit.
Phillips stressed that the event is open to all South Bay residents, “regardless of their color, what they look like, regardless of what ethnicity they are, regardless of what economic background they’re from.”
“This is about education and acquiring skills,” she said. “This is about us coming together as the neighborhood and local community to work together to do better and to learn from one another.”
For festival access and information, visit awocenter.org.