Black Author Boxes 

We are African Art & Cultural Community Contributor CCC. Inc. (AACCCS), an organization that has for the past 10 years been contributing to the cultural landscape of Victoria through hosting a broad range of cultural, educational, and artistic events which celebrate the richness and diversity of African culture and creates avenues for cross-cultural development, engagement and education. In line with this, we host a series of events and programs in honour of Black History Month in February every year. For 2023, we have selected the theme, ‘Building Bridges’ and have thoughtfully developed the Black Author Boxes project which is a mobile library featuring authors of African descent traveling through local elementary schools in Victoria to introduce children to cultures that may be different from their own.

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We would like to invite your school to participate in this program. These books have been carefully curated to appeal to and be easily read by elementary school-aged kids. Each school will receive multiple copies of four different books. We have designed a rewards system to incentivise pupils to participate. For each book completed, a story map should be created by the child and emailed to us. This could be in any form from simple line drawings/sketches to digital versions illustrating the child’s understanding of the book’s message. Upon receipt of the story map, the child would receive one of our four Black Hero Badges. Children who are able to read all four books within the month, will also receive a Luther Badge. 

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The books should be picked up from our office at ISSAMBA Centre, 2722 Fifth St #209, Victoria, BC V8T 4B2 between 10:30  and 2:30pm on February 1, 2023. Fatoumata Bouare whose book is featured in the library will be conducting book readings between 10:30 - 11:30am. Each reading will be 15 - 20 minutes long. As spaces are limited, kindly book a spot by indicating in the appropriate section below if you would like to attend the reading with your class. We hope that this project would serve as a step to reduce social distance between people of African descent and the dominant and other cultural groups within Victoria, BC.