The Bedford Stuyvesant Museum of African Art is dedicated to providing an enriching educational expe The Bedford Stuyvesant Museum of African Art
1157 Bedford Avenue, Ste 1
Brooklyn, New York 11216
Symbols of Tribal Spirits: The Bedford Stuyvesant Museum of African Art (BSMAA), a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit arts organization, was founded in 2004 by Vira Lynn Jones, the Executive Director.
BSMAA is dedicated to providing an enriching educational and cultural experience to an underserved community in Central Brooklyn and beyond. With its unique collection of African artifacts from 40 of the 55 African countries, BSMAA will strive to increase a broader appreciation and encourage a deeper understanding of the richly diverse people, art, music and culture on the continent of Africa. BSMAA will strive to educate the youth about Africa and its incredible contributions to the world. This effort will create a curiosity and desire in the youth to want to learn about other cultures. This will make them better citizens. Vira Lynn Jones was born and raised in Charleston, West Virginia. She received an undergraduate degree in journalism from Ohio University and a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University. She was a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana, West Africa and a United Nations Volunteer in The People’s Republic of China where she taught English as a Second Language at a university in Nanjing. She has traveled extensively in the Ivory Coast, Mali, Togo, Malaysia, Australia, Cambodia, Hong Kong and Europe.
Operating as usual
James Shaw, Ruth E. Carter, Kevinee Gilmore and Minister Tony Muhammad visitng our Museum before the Ceremony. Thanks, your are amazing!!
James Shaw, Ruth E. Carter, Kevinee Gilmore and Minister Tony Muhammad visitng our Museum before the Ceremony. Thanks, your are amazing!!
Do you know our honored Rob L. Garris?
He founded the @throwawaykids Foundation, Inc. in 2004. This entity was formed due the overwhelming issues regarding the foster care system in America. Rob’s purpose and mission with this foundation is to form a coalition across the country to monitor the foster care system and bring changes within the system to protect and support all children in foster care as well as Adoptees. Those who are looking to obtain medical and birth records to become familiar with their history and identity are all causes that Rob works diligently to advocate for with local and national politicians as well as informing and educating his community and the surrounding communities of the injustice in the system.
Attempt to reunify children of the Foster Care System with their Biological family.
The primary goals and objectives of Throwaykids Foundation is:
* Protect kids in Foster Care by monitoring supervisory processes.
* To develop relationships with all agencies, especially grassroots organizations to bring about change in the Foster Care System.
* To be a voice of support for caseworkers who are extensively understaffed and underpaid affecting the quality of service to the Children in Foster Care System.
To form a service for adoptees with their families.
Gumbo Dance!! Do you know?? See it live on the 4th Nelson Madiba Mandela Humanitarian Award!!
You’re going to LOVE this year’s celebration of the life and legacy of Nelson Mandela! Join us at the Brooklyn Museum on October 13, 2018! The festivites start at 7pm. With appearances by:
• Ruth E. Carter - Costume Designer of “Black Panther” the movie
• Minister Tony Muhammad
• Rob Garris - CEO/Founder Throwaway Children Foundation
• Kevinee Gilmore - Founder of Fostercare
And you’ll see performances by:
• Lilias White - Award Winning Broadway Actress
• The Dwana Smallwood Performing Arts Center
• African Stilt Walkers
• Gumbo Dancers & Guro Mask Dancers
Tickets are on sale now but sure to go fast! Get your tickets today at https://goo.gl/12bb8h and don’t miss the celebration!
#africanart
The Bedford-Stuyvesant Museum of African Art (BSMAA) will honor James Shaw, Jr., who has been hailed as a hero for wrestling a rifle from a crazed gunman at a W
The Bedford-Stuyvesant Museum of African Art (BSMAA) has received an official letter from the South African-based Nelson Mandela Foundation sanctioning its annu
Ruth E. Carter, costume designer of @blackpanther , will be on our event of 13th October!!
Theme: Humanitarians Who Have Impacted The World
Get tickets: https://bit.ly/2QezAtN
Honorees: Hon R. Arikana Chihombori, African Union Ambassador, Former Mayor David Dinkins, NYC Majority Leader Laurie Cumbo, Judge Betty Staton, 2016 Bronze Medal Winner in Fencing, Ibtihaj Muhammad, African Union Ambassador and Sharon Content.
Performing Artists: Asase Yaa Youth Ensemble, African Stilt Walker and South African Trumpeter Lesedi Ntsane.
A cultural celebration to honor the 2016 Mandela Humanitarian Award Recipients, who have worked tirelessly toward improving the lives of our military veterans.
The three recipients are:
Dr. Loree Sutton, Commissioner, Department of Veterans Affairs, Mayor Bill de Blaso’s Administration;
Komal Ahmad, CEO/Founder, COPIA; and
Herbert Sweat, who is a former Vietnam veteran. He is also a community leader and board member with Black Veterans for Social Justice (BVSJ).
In addition, two honored guest speakers, SPC Shoshana Johnson, Ret., the first African-American female prisoner of war in the military history of the U. S., and Major Wilem Wong, are also scheduled to speak.
Presentation of World music and cultural dances by the following performing artists:
Miri Ben-Ari, Grammy award-winning violinist
Thunderbird American Indian Dance Company
Cossack Dancers
The Mighty Zulu Nation
Yuliya Shtark, belly dancer
Yasser Darwish, Egyptian Derwish Dance
Roman Diaz, Afro-Cuban Ensemble
Kowteff West African Dance Company
Pictures by Michael Davis
A cultural celebration to honor the 2016 Mandela Humanitarian Award Recipients, who have worked tirelessly toward improving the lives of our military veterans.
The three recipients are:
Dr. Loree Sutton, Commissioner, Department of Veterans Affairs, Mayor Bill de Blaso’s Administration;
Komal Ahmad, CEO/Founder, COPIA; and
Herbert Sweat, who is a former Vietnam veteran. He is also a community leader and board member with Black Veterans for Social Justice (BVSJ).
In addition, two honored guest speakers, SPC Shoshana Johnson, Ret., the first African-American female prisoner of war in the military history of the U. S., and Major Wilem Wong, are also scheduled to speak.
Presentation of World music and cultural dances by the following performing artists:
Miri Ben-Ari, Grammy award-winning violinist
Thunderbird American Indian Dance Company
Cossack Dancers
The Mighty Zulu Nation
Yuliya Shtark, belly dancer
Yasser Darwish, Egyptian Derwish Dance
Roman Diaz, Afro-Cuban Ensemble
Kowteff West African Dance Company
Pictures by Michael Davis
The Thunderbird American Indian Dancers are the oldest resident Native American dance company in New York. The troupe was founded in 1963 by a group of ten Native American men and women, all New Yorkers, who were descended from Mohawk, Hopi, Winnebago and San Blas tribes. Some were in school at the time; all were “first generation,” meaning that their parents had been born on reservations. They founded the troupe to keep alive the traditions, songs and dances they had learned from their parents, and added to their repertoire from other Native Americans living in New York and some who were passing through.
Loree K. Sutton is a former brigadier general in the United States Army. She was the founding director of the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury (DCoE) and was a special assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs. Prior to founding DCoE, Sutton was commander of the Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center in Fort Hood, Texas, commander of the DeWitt Army Community Hospital, deputy commander for clinical services, General Leonard Wood Army Community Hospital and a special assistant to the Army surgeon general. During her career, Dr. Sutton has received many awards, including the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star Medal, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, and Order of Military Medical Merit.
Herbert Sweat is a Vietnam War who served in the U.S. Army from April 1966 to October 1970. He earned honors and medals for his gallantry, bravery and commitment. Born and raised in Bedford Stuyvesant, checked into Black Veterans for Social Justice 20 years ago, homeless and seeking services. He soon began participating in veteran discussion groups with other homeless veterans who were experiencing a familiar service-related problem with mental illness, unemployment, undiagnosed disability and poor social re-integration back into society and family life. The Veterans Action was formed out of these sessions. Today, Mr. Sweat provides outstanding leadership to the organization body and helped the Veterans Action Group become one of the most powerful veterans, self-help groups in New York City.
Hunger isn't just a global problem — it's "the world's dumbest problem." At least, that's how Komal Ahmad, CEO and founder of Copia, sees it anyway, and she's making it her life's mission to eradicate hunger and dramatically reduce waste globally with technology that seamlessly delivers surplus food from grocery stores, companies, caterers, and events directly to people in need. Her platform, Copia, is what she calls the "Uber for food recovery," has already helped to feed hundreds of thousands of people in the San Francisco Bay area — and is on track to feeding a million people, all with high-quality food that would have otherwise been wasted.
The inspiration to end hunger came when Ahmad was a senior in college. She had just returned from Naval ROTC summer training, when she came across a homeless man on the street — a fairly common sight in the Bay Area. Still, Ahmad was moved. "Something about him just compelled me to stop and invite him to join me for lunch," she says. “I don’t think I could have ever imagined that one lunch would have changed my life forever, but that’s exactly what happened.” Komal Ahmad, 26, said in an interview in Millennial Magazine. As Ahmad watched the man wolf down his food in front of her, she listened to him tell his story. He had just returned from his second tour in Iraq, was still waiting for his Veteran’s benefits to kick in, and because they hadn’t, he hadn’t had anything to eat in three days. "I was sitting across from this vet who gave the most selfless sacrifice for our country, only to come home to face another battle, that of hunger and homelessness," Ahmad says.
Adding insult to injury, right across the street they watched Berkeley’s dining hall throw away thousands of pounds of food. “It was this very stark reality, of those who have and waste, and those who are in need and starve, and those two people right across the street from another.” She realized she had to do something.
Ahmad's next step was to get in touch with the dining halls on campus to see about reallocating excess food to people in need. The school was willing to donate surplus meals to Ahmad, if she distributed them on her own. Ahmad happily agreed — only to find out that doing so wasn't quite so simple. She was in class when she first received a call from a campus dining hall manager. There were 500 gourmet sandwiches leftover from a campus event that were going to be discarded, unless Ahmad wanted them. She didn't even have a car — after all, she was a college student — so she rented one, loaded the perishable sandwiches into the vehicle with the air conditioning blasting, and then called up every shelter, food bank, and non-profit within a 40 mile radius to see who could use the extra food. Many didn't answer. Some said they didn't need any food for the day. Others agreed to take 10-15 sandwiches. Frustrated and parked on the side of the road, her car full of food no one was able to take, Ahmad decided there had to be a better solution for distributing food. "It shouldn't be this hard to do the right thing, to do a good thing, to feed people" she says.
She thought how great it would be if people who had food could say, "Hey, we have food," and people who need food could say, "Hey, we need food," and we could match these two people and clear the marketplace. And that's essentially what we've built. A sophisticated technology-enabled logistics company that can scale to feed people and reduce food waste globally.”
If you have excess food, simply login to Copia’s app or website, express how much food you have left over, and request a pickup. Copia's algorithm will match your food to recipients currently looking for food donations. Then, a Food Hero (professional food handler) from Copia's delivery team will pick up the food, and distribute it to where it's most needed at the time. For instance, if a company has 3,000 pounds of food left over after a conference, 500 pounds of that food might go to one food kitchen, while another 900 pounds might go to a homeless shelter or veteran’s agency — and so on, until the food has been entirely divvied up. It's all about figuring out who has the capacity to accept what and when.
If it seems simple, that's because it is. Since its start, Copia has recovered over 830,000 pounds of food, feeding over 700,000 people (for reference, that's more than the population of Luxembourg). During Super Bowl 50 alone, which took place in the Bay Area this year, Ahmad and her team recovered 14 tons of food — enough to fill four 16-foot-long refrigerated trucks to the brim, and feed 23,000 people at non-profits and shelters all over the San Francisco Bay Area. "We were essentially able to, eliminate hunger and the necessity to purchase or make more food for over 18 non-profits for the entire week" Ahmad says. To date, Copia has not wasted a single pound of food.
But Copia's potential to distribute food and other vital resources goes far beyond the Bay Area. During a talk at the 2016 Women In The World Summit in New York City, Ahmad explained how Copia has received over 50,000 requests for global expansion, including from senior government officials in Germany and Austria who reached out to say they were interested in bringing Copia’s platform and operations overseas to Europe to help redistribute food and other resources to Syrian migrants who had entered their countries.
“Everyone wins with Copia,” Ahmad said. “We win because we’re feeding hundreds of thousands of people in need – including veterans, senior citizens, women and children — with high-quality food. Corporations and food providers reduce the amount of food that they’re wasting lowering disposal and over-purchasing costs, while receiving significant tax savings. They see their impact firsthand by feeding people directly in their community. We also help our environment by keeping out of landfills.”
The piece of technology Copia has built is so extraordinarily advanced that it can also be applied to the redistribution of other resources in the future. “Soon we will be able to use our platform to redistribute medical supplies, medicine, books, clothing, technology, and so on.” And, it's this type of opportunity for worldwide growth that Ahmad wishes for Copia. "If I was going to dedicate my life to something, it wouldn't be something that would operate on a small scale. It would be something that scales globally in order to serve hundreds of millions of people.”
In 2016, The Third Annual Nelson 'Madiba' Mandela Humanitarian Awards presents 'The Salute To Warriors: A Cultural Tribute to Our Men and Women in Uniform' and honored the efforts of Dr. Loree Sutton, M.D., Mr. Herbet Sweat and Ms. Komal Ahmad; beside them Ms. Vira Jones founder of BSMAA.
A cultural celebration to honor the 2016 Mandela Humanitarian Award Recipients, who have worked tirelessly toward improving the lives of our military veterans.
The three recipients are:
Dr. Loree Sutton, Commissioner, Department of Veterans Affairs, Mayor Bill de Blaso’s Administration;
Komal Ahmad, CEO/Founder, COPIA; and
Herbert Sweat, who is a former Vietnam veteran. He is also a community leader and board member with Black Veterans for Social Justice (BVSJ).
In addition, two honored guest speakers, SPC Shoshana Johnson, Ret., the first African-American female prisoner of war in the military history of the U. S., and Major Wilem Wong, are also scheduled to speak.
Presentation of World music and cultural dances by the following performing artists:
Miri Ben-Ari, Grammy award-winning violinist
Thunderbird American Indian Dance Company
Cossack Dancers
The Mighty Zulu Nation
Yuliya Shtark, belly dancer
Yasser Darwish, Egyptian Derwish Dance
Roman Diaz, Afro-Cuban Ensemble
Kowteff West African Dance Company
Pictures by Michael Davis
A cultural celebration to honor the 2016 Mandela Humanitarian Award Recipients, who have worked tirelessly toward improving the lives of our military veterans.
The three recipients are:
Dr. Loree Sutton, Commissioner, Department of Veterans Affairs, Mayor Bill de Blaso’s Administration;
Komal Ahmad, CEO/Founder, COPIA; and
Herbert Sweat, who is a former Vietnam veteran. He is also a community leader and board member with Black Veterans for Social Justice (BVSJ).
In addition, two honored guest speakers, SPC Shoshana Johnson, Ret., the first African-American female prisoner of war in the military history of the U. S., and Major Wilem Wong, are also scheduled to speak.
Presentation of World music and cultural dances by the following performing artists:
Miri Ben-Ari, Grammy award-winning violinist
Thunderbird American Indian Dance Company
Cossack Dancers
The Mighty Zulu Nation
Yuliya Shtark, belly dancer
Yasser Darwish, Egyptian Derwish Dance
Roman Diaz, Afro-Cuban Ensemble
Kowteff West African Dance Company
Pictures by Michael Davis
New York, NY
11216
| Monday | 09:00 - 17:00 |
| Tuesday | 09:00 - 17:00 |
| Wednesday | 09:00 - 17:00 |
| Thursday | 09:00 - 17:00 |
| Friday | 09:00 - 17:00 |
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Gumbo Dance!! Do you know?? See it live on the 4th Nelson Madiba Mandela Humanitarian Award!!
This incredible video made by Gabriela Watson and Joyce Prado features Museum Director Vira Jones and it is your official invite to the 3rd Annual Nelson Mandela Humanitaria Awards Presentation Sunday! See you there!
A clip of the music from Saturday's African Art Mixer here at BSMAA. The Cruzata Trio will be back Sept 24 for another afternoon of fun. Don't miss it!
Slave One, Institute of African Heritage
1215 Fulton StCouncil of American Jewish Museums
15 West 16th Street, 2nd FloorBrooklyn Museum Libraries & Archives
200 Eastern PkwyMaking Art at the Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Pkwy, Brooklyn
Society of Fellows in the Humanities at Colum
74 Morningside Dr
Northeast Region of the United States Holocau
60 East 42nd Street, Suite 1000
Academy for Christian Thought - ACT
PO Box 3230, Church St Station
Young Friends of the Museum of Jewish Heritag
Museum of Jewish Heritage, 36 Battery Pl