NAPELA works with West African and other immigrant and refugee women who are attending English language classes, are studying for the U.S. citizenship exam, and are entrepreneurs. Several participants connect all of these pieces together on summer afternoons at Park Hill Community Market, where they set up vendor stalls and create an open-air cultural marketplace in a former parking lot at Park Hill Apartments. The market preserves and passes on cultures, building community cohesion in the process.
The festival encourages the community to engage, identify, and share traditions so that our children might understand the rich cultural history that they come from.
The Community Festival and the Park Hill Community Market is an annual event organized by NAPELA and co-sponsored by Citizens Committee of New York and the NAPELA board. The market and festival are also fortunate to partner with Staten Island Arts and Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts NY’s (NOCD-NY) Creative Transformations: Arts, Culture and Public Housing Communities program.
