Wokie Weah Receives Community Empowerment Award

Wokie Weah, NYLC Vice President of Programs, was recently honored at the 2008 Summit for Courageous Conversations on Achieving Racial Equity and Excellence in Education Conference, held in New Orleans.  She was celebrated for her work encouraging collaboration among communities and schools on racial equality and child advocacy — work she has done both in the U.S. and in her native Liberia.

“I was completely surprised,” says Weah. “The award recognizes not only my personal commitment, but also the commitment of 20 ‘Emerging Leaders’ who work with us on issues of racial equality and social justice.”

At the conference, Weah and NYLC staff members Libby Rau and Maya Beecham as well as NYLC board member Mary Noble led the Summit’s Equity Leadership in Service-Learning track. The track was designed to offer New Orleans educators and their partners around the nation a chance to collaborate on programs that might improve the quality of education for New Orleans children.

Through workshops and pre- and post-conference sessions, service-learning was emphasized as a strategy for addressing issues like HIV/AIDS, which disproportionately impacts communities of color.

“We aimed to model an intergenerational approach,” said Beecham, who was instrumental in developing a multi-generational panel on how to talk about HIV/AIDS with young people. The panel included youth from a local middle and high school as well as Daisy Slan, a former superintendent from Baton Rouge, La. “The goal was to help participants take their experiences from the conference home, and apply them in their own communities,” Beecham added.

Local middle school Sophie B. Wright, a partner in NYLC’s WalkAbout program, collaborated with the NYLC staff on the HIV/AIDS prevention workshop.  The workshop included a several-mile benefit walk with the local NO/AIDS Task Force, which culminated at a local park. There, workshop participants could learn about community agencies working on HIV/AIDS prevention and healthcare services.  

Harry M. Hurst Middle School’s LaBrance Wetland Watchers also partnered with NYLC staff to offer an environmental workshop. The award-winning program has been instrumental in wetlands restoration in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. As Weah says, not only were these sessions designed to help attendees understand the recent and ongoing devastation in New Orleans, but also spread stories of “resilience, hope, and progress.”

California-based Pacific Educational Group, which hosted the conference, is known for its work with school districts on addressing institutional racism. This inaugural conference gathered approximately 550 superintendents, board members, district administrators, principals, program directors, teachers, parents and family members, university and high school students, pre K-12 and university educators, policy-makers, and researchers. The event’s overarching goal was to address systemic racism’s role in the achievement gap.

Queta Beltran, a participant in the conference and principal of James Monroe Elementary in San Leandro, Calif., sees service-learning as one means to that end: “So many students of color feel powerless, but through service-learning they see and feel that they do and can make a difference — what could be more self-empowerment than that?”