Getting “better books about Africa” in the hands of American children is the focus of Africa Access says director Brenda Randolph. The 25-year-old organization will hold its annual Children Africana Book Awards 2014 on Saturday, November 8 at the National Museum of African Art.  The event is from 11a-2p and is free.

The awards ceremony is part of the group’s promotion of the availability of  books about Africa the organization has reviewed and deemed as being “more accurate, more balanced,” continued Randolph. This year, the group will highlight four books:


Best Books for Young Children 

Bundle of Secrets: Savita Returns Home 
Mubina Kirmani, illustrated by Tony Siema
CreateSpace Publishers, 2013

Desmond and the Very Mean Word: A Story of Forgiveness
Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Douglas Abrams, illustrated by A.G. Ford
Candlewick Press, 2013
 

Best Books for Older Readers

Africa is My Home: A Child of the Amistad 
Monica Edinger, illustrated by Robert Byrd
Candlewick Press, 2013 

Once Upon a Time in Ghana: Traditional Ewe Stories
Retold in English
Ann Cottrell, translation by Agbotadua Togbi Kumassah, illustrated by Kwabena Poku
Afram Publications (Ghana), Ltd, 2013

The group reviews and lists recently published books and has a database of older releases on its web site.  “We are not a bookstore. We don’t sell anything,” clarified Randolph. The group depends on donations from individuals and others to cover its operation expenses.

Randolph, who is a also a librarian, started Africa Access after having a university position in Washington that received funding as a Title VI African National Resource Center. The government provides the funding for the Centers to promote learning about the world says Randolph.  When that position ended, Africa Access is where she channeled her interest.

Africa Access also partners with other groups such as Open Books.  Open Books often invites authors and/or illustrators to visit challenged schools and provides participants a book by the visiting author and/or illustrator. The books that they provide are from the Africa Access list.

One of the group’s newest projects is Read Africa. Any person can sign up for the program on the Africa Access website and log in when they have completed reading a book to a group of  children. “We then recognize the teachers' and other readers’ efforts during our awards program,” says Randolph.

Upcoming Events in Washington, DC

Fundraising Dinner
Busboys and Poets
5th and K St, NW
Thursday, November 6, 6p-8p, $100

Children Africana Book Awards Festival
National Museum of African Art
950 Independence Ave, SW
Saturday, November 8, 11a-2p, free
registration requested

Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s first female president, and her top rival Marina Silva, who is of African descent, are locked in a tight race for President of Brazil.  A respected opinion poll show Rousseff leading in the October 5 first round, but a virtual dead heat in the expected October 26 run-off.

The poll show Rousseff with 9 percentage point lead over Silva in the first round. If neither candidate gets 50 percent, a runoff will be held on October 26 and the poll shows Rousseff and Silva tied at 41 percent.  The poorest voters favor Rouseff.

Rousseff is benefiting from her policies that have reduced extreme poverty from 14 percent of the population to 3.5 percent, according to the United Nations.  The number of malnourished people dropped from 19 percent to below 5 percent, removing Brazil from the U.N. World Hunger Map.

One program, Bolsa Familia, pays mothers a varying monthly stipend as long as they can prove that they're keeping their kids in school and taking them monthly to government health clinics for checkups and immunizations.

While both women are fighting for the votes of the poor, reports say they are staying away from controversial social issues such as abortion, liberalizing drug laws, and marriage equality.  A poll showed that 79 percent of Brazilians oppose the legalization of abortion and marijuana and 53 percent are against same-sex marriage.

The United Nations estimates some 200,000 women die each year in Brazil during illegal abortions.  Brazil's Supreme Court recognized same-sex civil unions in 2011.

Why Control of the Senate Matters? No matter which party controls the Senate, says Electoral-vote.com, no legislation will pass in the next two years because there is nothing the House will pass that Obama will sign. Nevertheless, a case can be made that control of the Senate matters. First comes the matter of court appointments. In his last two years, Obama could fill dozens of vacancies on the Courts of Appeal, but only if the Democrats control the Senate.

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Time magazine reports that only one of three Americans can name the three branches of government: Executive, The Legislative, and The Judicial.

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Republican Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon, said there is a good chance he will run for President. He also said he will make a decision by May.

New Yorker Deadra Malloy was diagnosed with HIV in 1988, but she remained healthy for so long that she wasn’t completely convinced she was positive. When she started getting sick in 2006, she decided to embrace her “ancestral roots” and accepted a job down South, where her mother was from.

Malloy didn’t know that the move, first to North Carolina and then to Columbia, S.C., would make it much more difficult to manage her disease. New York offers free health care, including HIV drugs, to HIV-positive state residents who are uninsured or underinsured, while assistance is harder to come by in North Carolina and South Carolina. A single mother of two at the time of her move, Malloy couldn’t afford her medication, which cost upward of $2,500 a month. So she did without it for nearly a year — and ended up in an emergency room with a raging case of pneumonia.

Click to Read More from the Washington Post

"You had the opportunity to lead in an enlightening way and it seems to me your organization has failed."

- Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt's protest letter to the DAR over its refusal to book Marian Anderson to sing at Constitution Hall in Washington, DC because Anderson was Black, February 26, 1939

Roosevelt hopped in the back of pilot C. Alfred "Chief" Anderson's plane at the Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama and went for a flight. It was a big deal because Anderson was Black, March 1941.

In the last Snippets, we asked you what new department or section you would like added to Port of Harlem Snippets.  The consensus was for us to add a section called “Money” with financial information and advice. The new section will be coming soon as well as our use of another social media, Instagram. We currently use Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to distribute Port of Harlem and to communicate with you.

You can still voice your opinion on what new section we should add by clicking this survey link.

The U.S. National Arboretum will host its annual Chili Pepper Festival Saturday, October 11 from 1p to 4p. This event will have lots of salsa to taste and the Potomac Unit members will be available to answer questions about chili peppers. Other Mid-Atlantic Units will provide samples of chili based foods, including hot chocolate and sorbets. You’ll also have the opportunity to learn about the diversity of chilies by exploring the Garden’s extensive collection of more than 60 varieties, including some of the world’s hottest known peppers.

 

Alioune (Maduka Steady) and Amina (Joy Jones) are Abby and Zack’s younger and more financially stable, French speaking landlords in Belleville.

Washington, DC
Belleville
Studio Theater
1501 14th Street, NW
through Sun, Oct 12, $44-$88

Africa Umoja
Washington DC
National Theater
1321 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Thu, Oct 2-Sun, Oct 12, $

Quiet Moments
Art by Greg Scott
Bill Johnson Studio
51 W Street, NW
Opening: Fri, Oct 3, 6p-9p
Studio: Sat, Oct 4-Sun, Oct 5, noon-6p, free

Sometimes It Snows in Atlanta
Anacoastia Playhouse
2020 Shannon Pl, SE
Sun, Oct 5,3p, $

Fetch Clay, Make Man
Round House Theatre
4545 East-West Highway
Bethesda
Metro: Bethesda (1 block)
Fri, Oct 10-Sun, Nov 2, $

Muslim International Cultural Day
America’s Islamic Heritage Museum
2315 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave SE
Sat, Oct 11, 11a-5p, free

Support Group for HIV+ Women
Help Us Helping Us
3636 Georgia Ave, NW
Meets every 2nd and 4th Tue, 6p-8p

Baltimore
Baltimore Black Pride
Citywide
Fri, Oct 10-Sun, Oct 12

Banjul
Tabaski Feast Day or Eid Al Adh
Sat, Oct 4, free

New York City
The Harlem Rens
Thu, Oct 2-Sun Nov 16
Thurs 8p, Sats 8p, and Suns 4p, $39.50-$99
$30 POH Discount Tickets - Code: “HRSOC”

Brooklyn Children's Museum
“More Than Meets the “I””
(exhibit that allows children to explore biology,
health, robotics, and technology through recent
innovations in the fields)
145 Brooklyn Ave
Thu, Oct 9, 2014-Mon, Jan 19, 2015
Tue-Sun, 10a-5p, $9

Target Free Sundays at
The Studio Museum in Harlem
144 W. 125th St.
Sun 12p-6p, free
Thu-Fri, noon-9p; Sat 10a-6p, $7 adults

 

 

 

 

• Africa in WWI | 12 Years a Slave For Children | Freda Payne Winner
  (4th Snippets)
  
  
• Corey Pegues
  (2nd Snippets)

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