Sankofa Young Women’s Leadership Program 2025 Culminating Event

Join CCCADI on Wednesday, March 26th, from 6-8pm at CCCADI Firehouse to celebrate the culmination of our 2025 Sankofa Young Women’s Leadership Program! This year’s cohort explored the theme of “AFRICARNIVAL: Celebrating African Indigenous Heritage and the Leading Women of Carnival.”

Over the past 8 weeks, the Sankofa cohort journeyed into the belly of Carnival, its origins and the ways in which women were, and still are, central figures of this moving and evolving cultural institution.

For their culminating event, the Sankofa Young Women will present a re-envisioned Carnival, containing all of the elements of Carnival (Music, Dance, Spoken Word, Processional, Celebration, Liberation, Connection, Continuity and Future Talk), while being anchored in the seven principles of Maat (Truth, Justice, Balance, Harmony, Reciprocity, Order, Propriety).

Maat was an ancient Egyptian goddess who embodied the principles of law, order, justice and balance. With time, Maat evolved into a principle by which Egyptians lived their lives. This year’s Cohort has chosen this divine feminine principle as the anchor for their Culminating Event.

The celebration will feature a Keynote speech by interdisciplinary artist, scholar & educator Jaime Philbert, whose journey has brought her to explore Kalinda, the ancestral Trinidadian martial art of stickfighting.

This year marks the first time we open the doors to Sankofa’s culminating event to the public, but with a theme like “AFRICARNIVAL”, how could we not?

The Sankofa Young Women’s Leadership Program is part of CCCADI’s Youth Pathways. An arts education program, Youth Pathways is designed to provide Black and Brown youth with space and opportunity to experience active community engagement and advocacy, cultural empowerment and enrichment, and a connection to a larger global movement. The youth are leaders of our Diasporic community and we seek to amplify their voices and vision for meaningful and impactful social change.

Interdisciplinary Artist, Educator, Scholar, Writer, Curator, and Filmmaker, Jamie Philbert is a native of Trinidad and Tobago, brought up in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn. She is a dance graduate of Fiorello H. La Guardia High School for Music, Art and the Performing Arts. She is the founder of Echoes Dance Company', and of Art On Purpose, a multifaceted lifestyle brand that promotes social awareness and cultural responsibility through dance performance and education, fashion and creative arts education. In 2019, she began an official rites of passage journey towards becoming a bois woman, a warrior woman of Kalinda. This journey inspired her to conceptualize and develop a dance and performance technique rooted in the tradition and culture of Trinidad and Tobago's martial art form, Kalinda.

Host or Publisher CARIBBEAN CULTURAL CENTER AFRICAN DIASPORA INST.