Vision & Planning Team (VPT)

Marcia Tate Arunga

Alma Lorraine Bone-Constable

LueRachelle Brim-Atkins is a nationally known consultant, trainer, author, inspirational speaker and business owner. She was Director of Staff Training and Development at the University of Washington for 15 years, where she was responsible for training and organization development for the 10,000 University employees. After receiving the 2004 Outstanding Alumnus Award from Leadership Tomorrow, LueRachelle increased the accompanying $1000 stipend to launch the Alta Brim Kenya Fund (named for her mom) to help finance AAKEWO joint venture projects at village schools and Hilltop orphanage.  In response, the founders of Hilltop renamed it for LueRachelle’s mother—the Alta Brim Orphanage.

Mayet Dalila

Doreen Cato is Executive Director of First Place School—a local school for children and families who are homeless—where she leads a team of 26 staff members, over 100 direct service volunteers, manages a $1.8 million operations budget and recently completed a successful $6.2 million capital campaign. In her work with AAKEWO, Doreen has established a partnership with SACODEN, an NGO that works with children and women’s groups in Kibera, the largest slum in Africa. The consummate networker, Doreen uses her myriad affiliations to bring awareness of and support for the work of CRM/AAKEWO.

Dr. Joye Hardiman is the Executive Director of The Evergreen State College Tacoma Campus, a position she has held since 1991. She is an educator, scholar and life-long learner. Dr. Hardiman is a frequent keynote speaker, a sought-after institute and workshop designer/facilitator. She has over 25 years of experience as an engaged and reflective practitioner of Learning Community Excellence and Higher Education Reform. She has been a core facilitator, fellow and resource faculty for the Washington State Community College Minority Student Success Project, the Washington Center/Ford Foundation Cultural Pluralism Summer Institutes, the FIPSE National Learning Community Dissemination Institutes, the PEW Foundation Learning Communities Dissemination Project and the Lumina Foundations’ Achieving A Dream Project. She is an expert in custom designing presentations to meet the needs of College presidents, senior administrators, faculty, staff and students, locally, regionally, and nationally in the areas of Leaning Community Design, Student Recruitment, Retention and Success; Diversity is more than Skin; Curriculum Inclusivity, Pedagogy Reciprocity and Environmental Hospitality; and Institutional Change, Capacity Building and Paradigm Shifts.

Benita R. Horn

Lynn Lambie

Dawn Mason

Dr. Zakiya Mwanatabu Stewart

Kwaheri/Oriti (Farewell), Zakiya

 Mother, wife, sister, sisterfriend, sorority sister, mentor, teacher, community activist, professor, coach, benefactor, counselor, facilitator, administrator, Delaney School and Community Kwanzaa co-founder, Cultural Reconnection Mission/African American Kenyan Women’s Interconnect (CRM/AAKEWO) Vision & Planning Team (VPT) member—these were just a few of the words used to describe our Sister Zakiya Mwanatabu Stewart at her homegoing service on Tuesday, July 25, 2007. After years of courageously fighting cancer, Zakiya joined the ancestors around midnight on Saturday, July 21, 2007.

As we celebrated her life at her homegoing service, the spirit of our beloved Africa was everywhere. CRM/AAKEWO delegates dressed in traditional African clothes. Delegate Josie Howell had the congregation on its feet as she sang the song she sings every year in Kenya with the children, " I Believe I can Fly" as well as “I Rise”—a song by Zakiya’s favorite gospel artist, Yolanda Adams. For the repast, her sisters on the VPT decorated the fellowship hall with African art, mud cloth and kente, decorated the dining tables with lesos from Kenya, and placed a beautiful Ghanaian Adinkra funeral cloth on her casket.

Zakiya traveled to Kenya in the original CRM delegation in 2000. With vision and forethought, she founded the Ombogo Girls Academy Scholarship Endowment that will continue to provide scholarships for girls at Ombogo in perpetuity. She organized the Cultural Reconnection Mission for Educators in July 2006, taking many of her former students and mentees to The Continent to teach and learn from Kenyan educators and students. The Vision & Planning Team (VPT) made the decision to name subsequent Cultural Reconnection Education Missions The Zakiya Mwanatabu Stewart Education Mission. An active member of the VPT, she served as treasurer, then co-treasurer as her health failed. Her warm, firm, visionary, and candid input served the Cultural Reconnection Missions well. A Pan-Africanist educator through and through, she was all about sustainability, collective action, and the hard core belief that people of African descent are totally capable of solving their own issues and moving forward with dignity.

Friends, professional acquaintances, politicians (MLK County Councilman Larry Gossett, State Reprsenstative Eric Pettigrew, Seattle Mayor Greg Nichols) expressed written or oral condolences. Delany School co-founders, her students, AKA sorority sisters, sister, nephew, and brother-law spoke with admiration of Zakiya and her legacy. The CRM/AAKEWO Art Collective showed a DVD of Zakiya on her various trips to Kenya. It was a tribute fitting for such a woman.

Her final days were characteristically Zakiya. She wanted to leave the hospital to be at home surrounded by her family and friends. She refused the hospital bed at home and chose to sleep in her own bed and wanted to move to it under her own power. She acquiesced to her son, Gamba’s assistance to get in the bed only when he said that would make HIM feel better.

Members of the VPT visited with her the day before her death. Together we talked, prayed and spoke to Zakiya of how important she was in our lives. Together we recited the Black Pledge which seemed to give her a burst of energy as she joined the recitation. The Black Pledge had been part of the curriculum developed by Zakiya for the Delaney Learning Center:

We are the first and the last; the beginning and the end.

We pledge to:

Think Black

Act Black

Buy Black

Praise Black

Love Black, and to

Be Black, because

We are Black

We pledge to do Black things today to insure a Black tomorrow!

HARAMBEE! HARAMBEE! HARAMBEE!

(Pull together! Pull together! Pull together!)

Zakiya found the CRM/AAKEWO motto—We are African, not because we were born in Africa but because Africa was born in us.

The fact that Zakiya was never apologetic and always proud that she was a Pan-Africanist, was reflected in words of condolences that came all the way from The Continent: Thank the Almighty God for Zakiya's life and dedication to the work of cultural reconnection. She came (to Africa) and never gave up the fight against illiteracy and disease. She worked for the general uplifting of the lives of the less-privileged in our society. She assisted the girl children, particularly at Ombogo Academy. We say a big "Thank YOU" to Zakiya! (Petroline Arunga)

As with others at the service, the members of CRM/AAKEWO are grateful to her husband and family for sharing Zakiya so generously with us for our work and in our friendships. We were 10 on the VPT and now we are 9. Zakiya has joined the ancestors and from that vantage point will continue to watch over us, softly, gently, and convincingly guiding our discussions, providing balance and thoughtfulness as she always has.

Kwaheri ya kuonana/Oriti, Zakiya (Kiswahil/Dhuluo: Farewell until we meet again). As your friend and fellow traveler, Paige Parker said, We’ll see you on the other side and we’ll have one big party!