Kúkátónón’s Renaissance

Zeenab FowlkWhen Kúkátónón executive director Zeenab Fowlk stepped into her role in 2019, it felt as though she had come full circle since participating in the organization’s African dance program in elementary school.

“Kúkátónón is great for both African and African American communities,” Fowlk said. “I thought that was really needed in Portland and around Oregon.”

But Fowlk thought that as a program, Kúkátónón – which translates to “we are one” in Liberia’s Kpelle language – could go further in what it offered the community. The Covid-19 pandemic both complicated this vision, and made it feel all the more inevitable, Fowlk told The Skanner.

Fowlk was originally hired in 2018 as a consultant through her firm, Rural and Urban Development League. She recalls finding a faltering program that ultimately looked like it might dissolve under the constant struggle for funding and what she observed to be poor communication among staff, as well as a too-narrow program focus.

“Especially coming from Portland, being raised in northeast Portland, participating in a lot of cultural activities and different dance troupes, it made me think this program really has a legacy and should continue,” Fowlk told The Skanner. “Our hope was to come in and give the organization a good, stronger foundation, then hopefully have a person come in to start leading the organization. But a lot of things have happened between that time, especially COVID. It shifted quicker than we thought.

"We had to really change our approach quickly.”

Dance and Development

First, Fowlk worked with her community and with the Kúkátónón board to launch REAL H.I.P. H.O.P. Circles - Community Healing Art Training in October of 2020. For a month, there were virtual sessions on Sundays and Thursdays, often hosted by board members.

Although there is some debate as to the meaning of the term “hip hop,” Fowlk says she learned the true meaning was as an acronym for “higher infinite power healing our people. “

“We were used to being around each other in workshops, dancing, drumming – but with COVID, we reimagined how do we continue to focus on our goal, our mission?” Fowlk said. “So we were so pleased to be able to offer this to the community and to actually hold these sessions and really engage in that way.”

Fowlk and her staff then secured a grant through the Oregon Department of Education’s Youth Development Division to support a youth and young adult program in spring, with Portland Public Schools becoming a partner. To start, the program was geared to girls.

“The focus was about their mental health,” Fowlk said.

“We had a lot of young ladies that were suffering from depression, trauma, things that I would say we’re accepting now in our community, but we didn’t accept when I was growing up. We didn’t talk about our female body parts, we didn’t talk about our mental state. We talked about, ‘What are you going to be when you grow up?’”

Board members stepped up to provide one-on-one support to program participants. Fowlk admits it was difficult to recruit students initially, and says she had to depend on principals and teachers to get the word out at a time when school staff was struggling to maintain attendance through virtual schooling.

She estimates the program had fewer than 20 participants, but she and her team tried to bridge the digital distance, in part, by putting together tool kits they safely dropped off at each girl’s home: Each contained a journal, a therapeutic coloring book with images that reflected them, colorful markers, fidget toys, bottled water, snacks, and a copy of Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools by Monique. W. Morris.

“Kúkátónón used to be just a place where people did dancing and drumming – they don’t see us so much as a program that focuses on the whole person and their families,” Fowlk said.

But the organization’s expanded mission, and its partnership with PPS, was arguably in the spirit of one of Kúkátónón’s “founding mothers,” Mama Rolia Manyongai-Jones, an immigrant from Liberia who worked as a teacher in the district.

“They want to use art, really put it at the center of everything,” Naomi Warren, a SAFE2 community partner who holds a PhD in Communication, told The Skanner.

“We don’t really think about it a lot, but it’s really integral to our sense of who we are. It’s a good umbrella organization that can put its tentacles in lots of different areas.”

Community activists Richard Brown and Lurlene Shamsud-Din have served as the program’s elders.

“They have really been there from the beginning,” Fowlk said. “They’re educators, mentors, and coaches, to really support Kúkátónón and its legacy as well, and they now serve as our chief advisory leaders.”

A Focus on the Future

At the beginning of 2021, the Youth and Young Adults – or “YaYAs” – program began to take shape.

Naomi Warren“We were really focused on the Student Success Act, getting people back into school, helping them understand why education was so important. But at the same time we knew our young people were suffering a lot,” Fowlk said. “We wanted to support the identity of being Black, and teach them history that helps them understand why education is so important. For me, those examples came from my community before it was gentrified. I saw writers, artists, and they showcased this. They were leaders.”

When PPS announced funding for summer programs meant to counteract the rise in community violence, Kúkátónón found support for an inaugural program geared toward Black students, known as the Summer Academy for Education and Employment (SAFE2), which operated as a day camp run with the support of student interns.

“By the time we launched the program for the summer, we had 10 students on as interns,” Fowlk said. “They had different roles, including one who was supervisor for the program, one who was doing training and teaching for the classrooms, one who did outside work” to support the program’s goal that 50% of its programming would happen outside, away from worksites.

“We also partnered with Southeast Uplift Neighborhood Coalition, so our older interns would transport themselves on a bus almost an hour there to support them and learn things about the community, and ride the bus back. That was part of teaching them responsibility, teaching them time management, teaching them how to organize and plan. And allowing young people to take leadership.”

One intern planned out the logistics for visits to five area college campuses.

Meanwhile older participants, from high school sophomores to recent high school grads, benefited from working with Warren, who is an associate professor of Clinical Business Communication at the University of California’s Marshall School of Business. Joining the local cohort were students from the Burera Youth Community in Rwanda, another Kúkátónón partner.

“The work I did with them was kind of getting them ready for jobs, and their career development, despite their age,” Warren said. “We did analysis of their strengths and weaknesses to really get them to get in touch with themselves, and from there we branched out to whatever they needed: resume prep, interviewing. We created smart goals for everyone for the summer.”

Warren began by covering emotional intelligence.

“That’s the crux of everything, and when you have young people in that age range, 15-19, self-awareness is really important,” she said.

Meanwhile, students worked on fundraising projects where they set goals and took what they’d learned from a theoretical lens into practice. Classes in the virtual space led to one-on-one coaching.

“I was proud of their enthusiasm, and when they have these lightbulb moments,” Warren said. “Sometimes you couldn’t get to those moments without questioning them, but when they got it, they got it.”

Planning Ahead

Fowlk spoke with The Skanner shortly after Kúkátónón’s Kwanzaa celebration at Oaks Park was postponed due to snow. While it is tentatively rescheduled for this Saturday, Fowlk reports that many participants moved the festivities online in the meantime.

“People were really engaged,” she said. “That’s the thing. We don’t get to engage as much anymore because of Covid.”

As she looks at the year ahead, Fowlk is hopeful Kúkátónón can maintain and grow its offerings to the community, although funding is currently uncertain.

“It’s been an exciting year,” she said. “It’s been a tough year, but we’re hoping to keep this moving forward, bringing in new board members, bringing in stable funding, bringing in partnerships.”

For more information, visit Kukatonon.org.