Year of Return Exchange Trip: Ghana Conference

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Repaired Nations is excited to be coordinating a Year of Return Cooperatives Conference in Ghana happening in October 2019. If you would like to learn more about the Year of Return Cooperatives Conference in Ghana, and possibly attend the conference yourself, please continue reading or register below!

Tuesday, October 15 - RNCC - Agne Hill Hotel

9:45 am - 11:15pm -- PANEL: History of Ghana’s Cooperative Development

Panel Speakers: Patrick Naab, Ghana Cooperatives Council

With a focus on Kwame Nkrumah and W.E.B. DuBois. Jessica Gordon Nemhard’s Collective Courage provide an excellent Pan African framework for cooperative development.

11:30am - 12:30 pm - Mazin Jamal, Holistic Underground

Purpose

To discover what success really means to me in a way that reflects who I truly am and doesn't leave anyone I care about behind.

Elements of success, applicable personally and collectively:

Integrity: doing what I said I would do - honoring my promises to myself and others
Consistency
Clarity: awareness of what is most meaningful and essential in my life and purpose
Focus: using my resources most efficiently.
Ease: taking small sweet steps, and skillfully using the support available
Grace: awareness of our blessings through gratitude.

12:30 pm --1:30 pm --Lunch

1:45 pm - 3:00 pm -- PANEL: Role of Ghanaian Women & Youth in Cooperative Development

Panelists: Dr. Akosua Darkwah, Dr. Dzodzi Tsikata, University of Ghana Economics,

3:15 pm - 4:30 pm -- Unconference #2 - Cooperation Jackson

Members of Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi will present on the legacy of Slavery in Mississippi, particularly the ongoing inequities in labor and the economy. We will also share Cooperation Jackson’s work that promotes worker ownership through our current efforts to build a solidarity economy towards black self-determination and economic democracy.

Cooperation Jackson believes that we can replace the current socio-economic system of exploitation, exclusion and the destruction of the environment with a proven democratic alternative. An alternative built on equity, cooperation, worker democracy, and environmental sustainability to provide meaningful living wage jobs, reduce racial inequities, and build community wealth.

5:00 - 8:30 pm -- Happy Hour Dinner & Open Mic

Hosted by Mandela Msani & Honey Gold Jasmine

Special Guest --

Wednesday, October 16 - Pan African Solidarity Economy Network (PASEN) - Agne Hill Hotel

9:00 - 10:30 am -- Discussion: Opportunities and Challenges of Ghana Cooperative Development

Moderator: Ghanaian Colleague

What is the current state of cooperatives in Ghana? Do they cohere around a set of values? What (political, cultural, economic) opportunities and constraints do they face?
Ghanaian cooperative members (or economic justice workers) in the room share opportunities and constraints for Black coop development and expansion in the US

10:45 - 11:45 pm -- Q&A - Existing Trade Incentives

Moderator: Ghanaian Colleague

12:00 - 1:00 pm -- Lunch

1:00 pm - 2:30 - What does a Pan African Solidarity Economy Network look like?

Moderated by: Stacey Sutton, UIC Professor of Urban Planning

Renee Hatcher, Thurgood Marshall School of Law

What values should this network keep?
What problems will the network solve?
What is the networks ultimate goal?

3:00 - 5:00 pm - Co-Visioning

Moderated by: Mazin Jamal, Holistic Underground

Groups Split Up
Using the success framework from Day One, what are small concrete steps that Ghananians and African American can do to build the network?
- For the next 12 months, what skills, resources, or expertise can you commit to the network?
Evision what the network can accomplish in 10years, create a timeline.

5:00 pm - 9:30 pm --Dinner, Networking & Guidelines share out

If you would like to donate to support this vital conference, please make your tax-deductible contribution here!

Repaired Nations

(1) Forging Cooperative Connections between Ghana and the US.

We are organizing a cultural exchange trip that is primarily focused on creating pathways for African Americans to reinvest in Ghana regeneratively, without perpetuating the problems of capitalism. Our cultural exchange invites East African, West African, and U.S. cooperatives to begin dialogue for a co-created equitable development policy for Ghanaian economic development, and beyond. Dialogue is the key to our trip, for only through dialogue can two distanced peoples begin to find synergies between themselves, and only through dialogue can new arrivals to Ghana know what Ghanaians want for Ghana and how to help steward this vision. In partnership with the Ghana Cooperatives Council, we will host a conference in Accra at the National History Museum where attendees will share knowledge and experience while co-creating equitable development policy.

Dialogue is the key to our trip; it is only through dialogue that two distanced peoples with shared roots can begin to find synergies between themselves, and only through dialogue can new arrivals to Africa know what Africans want for Africa and how to help steward their visions. Co-created equitable development policy can only be built upon discussion, exchange of ideas, and information. This conference will begin, re-establish, and strengthen economic relationships throughout the African Diaspora.

(2) Equitable Cooperative Development Policy

The growing American cohort is a group of cooperative-minded people seeking to learn how Ghanaians in particular, and Africans in general, structure their collective efforts, to offer our experience and expertise to local projects, and to engage critical conversation regarding international cooperative exchange of resources. Attendees will form relationships that bloom into

Cultural content,
Import/export agreements,
Thought partnership, and
Community-owned real estate development uniquely structured to prevent displacement.

As global pressures from capital begin to move more and more Black residents from their homes, repatriating back to West Africa begins to make sense for the financial realities of many displaced people. We seek to build bridges now, and begin dialogue with Ghanaians to understand how capital pressures affect their lives and how an influx of cooperative effort from African Americans can increase their capacity to develop and co-own their own neighborhoods, instead of allowing outside capitalists to determine how neighborhoods are developed based solely on property ownership.

Repaired Nations and Collective Courage

(3) Coast to Culture Podcast

Our podcast, Coast to Culture, will document how cultural exchange attendees are approaching the Year of Return. Each person will give regular updates on how planning for the trip, and participating in the Year of Return has affected them emotionally, financially, interpersonally, and spiritually. Exchange organizers will share knowledge and revelations from their experience developing the exchange trip. Upon return to the Motherland, Coast to Culture hosts will interview experts in culture, law, business, and cooperative enterprises to help ground the audience in African cooperative business opportunities and how to prepare for international business between the U.S. and West Africa. We will forefront how welcoming Ghanaians are to cooperative business and how well African-Americans are received during the Year of Return. All of our podcast segments seek to spark engagement with cooperatives about Ghana's open door policy for the African Diaspora.

Repaired Nations