KINGSTON, Jamaica – “Helping others is an essential ingredient for being a better human,” declared a Caribbean-American community leader.
“By giving we increase not only our good will, but we expand our ability to have a productive, joyful life,” asserted Kwayera Archer Cunningham, head of Global Ase, an international firm established to assist leaders, organizations, corporations and communities working for social good.
The veteran community leader underscored the importance of giving to support community development in the United States and the Caribbean in 2016, asking “what better new year’s resolution can you make than to resolve to help those people and organizations working tirelessly to help others?”
Quoting the late legendary author Maya Angelou who declared: “I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver,” Archer Cunningham touched on another intangible effect of giving.
Archer Cunningham, who was honored in September by the historic National Guild for Community Arts Education, points to the work of five organizations “on the front lines of socioeconomic and cultural development.”
Heading her list of community-based groups doing exceptional work is the Cecil Boswell Facey Foundation in Kingston, Jamaica, which is investing in Jamaica’s future through basic education, the arts and the environment; and The Rethinkers in New Orleans, Louisiana, which runs Kids Rethink New Orleans Schools.
She also suggested the New York-based Ifetayo Cultural Arts Academy which Archer Cunningham founded and where she served as CEO for 25 years, and the Makeda Thomas New Waves! Institute in Trinidad, which has gathered more than 200 dance artists, teachers, and scholars in the Caribbean.
Archer Cunningham also recommended the Kingston-based Space Contemporary Art Museum, a Caribbean-based cultural NGO that fosters socioeconomic and cultural development through dialogue and engagement with contemporary art.
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