Free and open to all! Join us at the 5th Annual Napela Community Festival and Park Hill Community Market on Saturday, Sept 8, 2-6pm. Shop for unique cultural goods including clothes, fabrics, specialty produce, and prepared food and drinks. The afternoon will feature traditional folk art, dance and activities including great music from Yan, Ly, Mitch and Blamoh & The Traditional Dancers. The annual Miss Napela Princess will also be announced.
Napela Inc, a non-profit organization on Staten Island’s North Shore, 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, a HUD Section 8 development. The market preserves and passes on culturs, building community cohesion in the process. According to Adama Fassah, founder of Napela and organizer of Park Hill Community Market, “We encourage our community to engage, identify, and share traditions so that our children might understand the rich cultural history that they come from.” In 2018, Napela added a children’s after school program to their adult education services.
Can’t make the festival and market on Sept 8? Consider attending the First Annual Napela Fundraising Dinner on Saturday, Sept 15 (see the post below this one) or donating to Napela Inc to help them purchase supplies, pay rent, secure teachers, and facilitate arts and cultural programming for the coming year! You can donate at the button on the upper right corner of this website.
Napela Community Festival 2018 and the Park Hill Community Market is organized by Napela Inc 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.