EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
ACTIVATE AFRICAN CIVILIZATIONS MONTH & BEYOND
When Carter G. Woodson (the historian, author, journalist, and founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History) created Negro History Week in 1926, he didn't initially plan its transformation into Black History Month, or foresee that it would grow beyond the borders of the United States to be celebrated in various countries and under various names including African History Month, African Heritage Month, and more.
The goal of African Civilizations Month, whatever its local name, is clear: to enjoy the myriad cultures of the African planet, revel in the brilliance of 5000 years of African civilizations, and learn the best lessons from all of it to build the future we deserve.
If you want your school to plan for next February's African History Month celebration, the best time to start is March 1! That's because if you're going to be effective at helping students generate excitement, plan amazing events, and empower themselves intellectually and socially, you need as much time as you can get.
However, assuming it's not March 1, use whatever time you have. Certainly, the beginning of the new school year is a great time to help students organize their in-school AHM calendar, book guest presenters, arrange resources, and publicize the month of events.
As well, there's no reason you need to stop with the shortest, coldest month of the year. If students at your school have an Africentric club, or wish to create one, you can help them to plan and deliver the activities on this page (and more) year-round.
If you want help planning those events, or would like to share with us your plans, successes, photographs, video, and more so that we can help others learn about them, please contact Project Saqqara today. We can connect you with plans and organizations to help you present:
▲Augmented and virtual reality
▲Concerts
▲Fashion shows
▲Food extravaganzas
▲Guest speakers
▲Movies and documentaries
▲Sbai (Africentric instructor or artist) in Residence
▲Spoken word, poetry, and sketch comedy performances
▲Student performances and speeches
For more ideas, see the list of contests below!
HARNESS THE POWER OF CONTESTS
One of the easiest ways to get people to create useful and rewarding content and actions is to harness the power of pro-social competition. With a small amount of money or prizes (which a school could arrange through donations, crowd-funding, and other means), you could offer individual students and teams the chance to gain and share their knowledge of using fascinating Africentric information to improve their own lives, their schools, and their communities.
In his book Abundance, XPRIZE Chair Peter H. Diamandis describes several historical innovation prizes, including the 1714 Longitude Prize for measuring longitude at sea (the original GPS), the 1795 prize for food-preservation that creating canning, and the Raymond Orteig Prize that led Charles Lindberg to fly solo, non-stop, across the Atlantic Ocean in 33 hours in 1927, giving birth to the world-changing aviation industry.
Today, the XPrize innovation contests have produced advances in sub-orbital flight, oil spill removal, lunar landing, ocean health, medical “tricorders,” women’s safety, water abundance and more.
Communities can reap massive benefit from pro-social contests, as with the Chill Challenge for Affordable Off-Grid Refrigeration for Developing Countries. That contest awarded seven grants between $30,000 to $50,000 for low-cost refrigerator and community ice-maker prototypes in places where there’s no guarantee of 24-hour electricity. Refrigeration is a major component of food security and pharmaceutical safety, and therefore public health and economic growth.
In scores of fields across Africa’s 54 countries, countless innovators are entering pro-social contests such as the Seedstars Digital Democracy Challenge 2021 for young creatives, the African Tech Innovators and Entrepreneurs, the Namibia Upcycling Competition, Digital Agriculture for Agritech Startups, the Afri-Plastics Challenge, the Green People’s Energy Challenge, Delivering Water and Sanitation, Innovative Solutions with Social Impact, Women’s World Banking, the Code Global Challenge 2021 for Developers Worldwide, Social Contests for Social Entrepreneurs, the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, and the biggest prize in history, the XPRIZE Carbon Removal Competition 2021 ($USD 100 million).
You don't need to raise millions or even thousands of dollars to get competitors excited. For just $500 you could offer a $250 first prize, a $150 second prize, and a $100 third prize. If you can get donations of gear, technology, gift certificates and more, you can generate even more enthusiasm!
Work with students to identify exciting concepts for contests and ways to assess winners, including community leaders who can serve as judges (and possibly as mentors).
There are endless possibilities for topics, and getting students to look at the list of links of pro-social contest links above and find others online is an excellent way to start. Below are some Africentric contest topics to generate fun or fulfill important objectives:
▲"Afrowow!" podcasts about any topics that dazzle them, as with the excellent Africa's Untold Stories podcast
▲Animation (including real-time animation with the Unreal Engine)
▲Business development, as with Junior Achievement
▲Cooking, perhaps inspired by any of the fun competition on the Food Network
▲Coding: Creating apps, websites, and more, as with the highly accomplished Black Boys Code (Canada) and Black Girls Code (USA)
▲Comics
▲Creative writing
▲Engineering and science projects
▲Fashion creation and fashion show
▲Photography
▲Posters
▲Public service campaigns
▲3D Modelling
▲Video-making (as on YouTube and TikTok) about food, fashion, peak-performers, and even original short comedies and dramas
EMPOWER STUDENT ORGANIZATIONS
