Just ahead on "Black Issues Forum", a trip home to Africa reminds us of how much the motherland still lives within us.

And how reconnecting shifts our perspectives of who we are when we invest our time in the continent.

Stay with us.

- [Narrator] "Black Issues Forum" is a production of PBS North Carolina, with support from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation.

[upbeat music] ♪ - By the end of the African slave trade, more than 12 million Africans were forcibly taken to the Americas, never to return back to the land they knew as home.

Many of today's African-Americans living here in the United States, only hear of this history through the lenses of their ancestors, or through textbooks that don't always do it justice.

I had the amazing opportunity to visit the continent last year.

And I'd like to share that with you, that experience.

We've put together a short piece that showcases my experience while visiting Gorée Island in Senegal, West Africa.

Take a look, and we'll get to the discussion with our guests right after.

- Gorée is on the most western part of Africa.

When you look at the map like this, that's Gorée here.

So it's easy for the slave trader to get the slave from here, all the way to Europe, or America, or Brazil.

[singing in foreign language] ♪ Welcome to island ♪ ♪ Everybody clap your hand and follow me ♪ [somber music] Welcome to the slave houses.

All the 28 slave house used to be built just like this one.

[somber music] The man, a valid man was exchanged with a bottle of wine.

Or a gun, for a lady.

Or a mirror for a child.

[somber music] This one is a punishment room for the rebel.

The one who don't obey the rules, they keep them here, in this position.

In this hole, they used to put six to seven slaves in here.

[somber music] - To be in this space where you know so many of your ancestors died.

And the irony of it all, is it's gorgeous.

It's beautiful.

But so much blood has been shed.

- Watching that over again takes me right back.

It's memories that I'll never forget.

And I just get chills just thinking about it now.

So let's bring in today's guests to discuss their work on the continent, and how their stateside businesses impact our brothers and sisters abroad.

I welcome to the show Naya Powell of Utopia Global Wellness, as well as the author of the "30 Day to Utopia Living".

And Shemekka Ebony, co-founder of "I Am Brilliant".

- Thank you so much.

- Naya, I wanna start with you, because it was because of you, I had that amazing experience to go to Africa.

Tell us about the work you do, why we were there, and how Utopia Global Wellness chose Africa for this destination.

- Thank you so much, Kenia, for this wonderful opportunity.

Yes.

So, a component of Utopia Global Wellness is really our Utopia Living retreats.

And our retreats have a social impact component, but also highlight global wellness.

And it's very important to me, and I think for all of those that are part of the African diaspora to know where they come from and know their rich history.

Because we often see just a little snippet, here in America of what the depiction is of the continent.

Africa has so much richness to offer.

Our history has so much richness.

And I am moved, even by watching the replay of the video.

I was invited to host our retreat for 2022 by a sister friend, Awamary Khan, who's the founder of The Woman Boss.

And The Woman Boss is a nonprofit that empowers women entrepreneurs.

As a third generation entrepreneur, I believe that it's really important that we do empower entrepreneurship.

And so Utopia Global Wellness has a social impact component.

A part of a sense of well-being in terms of Maslow's hierarchy of needs is belonging and safety.

And you really can't have full well-being without even knowing where you come from.

And so for so many of us, as African-Americans, we don't know truly where we come from.

And unfortunately that is by design.

And we saw you standing and filming while we were there in Gorée island, standing in the cells of our ancestors.

And I'm getting emotional even thinking about it.

Standing in the doorway of no return.

Well, three million of our ancestors never made it because of the harsh conditions.

We even stood in the cell that was labeled "les enfants", "for the babies."

And so for us to be alive and standing and talking and having this forum, means that we are of the lineage that made it.

They were able to survive the most inhumane conditions that are inconceivable.

And so with that pain, there's also a pride of the resilience, of the strength of what we were able to not only endure, but I would say for those of us that are here on this platform by the grace of God, we've been able to thrive.

- Yeah.

- And so that is why it was really important for me to actually accept the honor and the invitation of Awamary Khan to bring a retreat back to the motherland.

And I learned more about my rich history and bring other sisters, leaders, women CEOs with me so we can bring this back to our communities and our families.

- Yeah, and we're so grateful for Awamary for the hospitality.

It really was a homecoming.

Shamekka, I wanna come to you.

I learned about the work that you do on the continent right before leaving for West Africa, and while I knew it was important before I left, once I got there, I understood why the work you do is so important, so share with us the mission behind I Am Brilliant and why Sierra Leone for you?

- The mission behind I Am Brilliant is really to the core of illuminating what we're passionate about and finding ways to engage in community for the sustainability of better practices that we want to see.

We have that within us.

Sierra Leone was chosen most deeply because my husband is a first-generation American.

His mother was born in Sierra Leone, his father Jamaican, and for us to take our family, we wanted to sow.

You know, the work that we do is transformational.

Why wouldn't we wanna do that where he began, where his grandmother built her house on a compound?

And being able to come into that same community and amplify entrepreneurship, as well as leadership development among leaders that are there on the ground with our partnership through organizations that were there out of Sierra Leone.

It just hit for us.

We had community leaders we had met speaking with Mandela Washington fellows that we met through Rutgers University just this summer.

So it lined up, everything lined up and the open doors happened.

We did this during a holiday and both days were packed with people wanting to just see themselves in a different way that helped them grow.

- Talk a little bit more about the I Am Brilliant experience.

What actually happens when you go?

- Yeah, so we co-design based on what the community needs are with our organizations that we partner with, but we really center re-imagining ourselves, giving ourselves the reboot to remind ourselves of who we are.

Even with our awareness of our DNA to the place of where you all were in Senegal, we have an even greater, deeper history before that that we don't get to tap into to see our drive, to see our will to live and our entrepreneurship and our intelligence and our brilliance, and so I Am Brilliant as a pathway to remember who you are.

And regardless of your circumstances, if there are things that have negatively impacted you, you can begin again and you can write your narrative right where you are.

Where that mistake made you, you get to begin again, and I Am Brilliant as that pathway and that reboot to make you be a better entrepreneur, a better family leader, a community leader, and strategizing for that better when we see ourselves in the transformation.

- Naya, we saw some of that in Senegal, and we also went to The Gambia.

Talk a little bit about the entrepreneurs that we worked with and how that really kinda enriched our experience as well.

- Oh my gosh, there were so many, and that it's a beautiful part of the impact we're able to make, the social impact, the investing in the economy as we're traveling there, not just from a tourism standpoint, but actually impacting those entrepreneurs.

So I don't even know where to begin.

I'll start with The Third.

The Third is actually an event space that hosted us our second day in Senegal, which was phenomenal, and it's founded by Monifa Pendelton, and we were the first group to be hosted at this beautiful private...

It's really a private club with restaurants and spa spaces and all of these spaces, and we even recorded our Utopia Talk there.

I'm actually wearing the design of Pape, a designer who is a Senegalese designer, and he also made my outfit that I wore on our welcome night.

In addition to that, we were able to spend time with The Woman Boss, we were able to speak to women entrepreneurs, we were able to empower them with a curated market.

We were hosted by the Ambassador of The Gambia, and then we were even afforded a curated shopping experience by programs in Senegal, so a lot of different things.

- Beautiful, beautiful.

If there's one thing I think the three of us learned during our trips back home is that reconnecting to our roots was really good for the soul.

You know, that that clip of myself there in my most [laughs] organic self was really just this moment to connect to nature, to connect to the ground, to connect to that space, and even though you may not know exactly which village you come from or the township your ancestors established, there's ownership in that trip back home and it's so indescribable.

Naya, all of the ladies on our trip shared that moment, I think I can say that fairly, at the point of no return.

Talk to us about how that shifted your perspective on the sacrifice that our ancestors made for us.

- So much.

I mean, so that was my second time being at Goree at the point of no return and doorway of no return.

I went the first time to curate the experience and I always say each experience I will be unpacking for a lifetime, because to actually stand in that doorway and to see that as you're looking out, and you talked about the juxtaposition of it being beautiful while also being such a space that is filled with pain, right?

But it gave me such a perspective of what was done before us.

So we stand on the shoulders of our ancestors and we are because they were, and it makes me not ever wanna take anything for granted in terms of the opportunities that I have been afforded.

And also think about how can I lift as I climb?

As a woman, as a female founder and just realizing, gosh, when you really think about the history of what we endured having to cross the Middle Passage and the different places and stations in which we were dropped off.

And so whether it was the islands or whether it was the Americas, and when we think about that, and it also made it very real for me when we saw Momalai, our guide, talk about how we traded.

We were traded and we traded for guns for guns or a bottle of wine or just for very insignificant things, and why would we trade one another for that?

Well, we were put in a position that it's either you are going to turn in your sister and brother and community or we're taking your family.

And so when we look at the DNA of that, from the time of us being brought to these different places and stations, unfortunately we were forced to choose ourselves over each other.

And you can still see that play out in the economy in the black economy here, the black dollar only circulates for six hours in our economy.

You also see that we only have six CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

So, it really brings home to me, how do we stand more united, more connected?

How do we break the cycle of division and really start to look at ourselves as brothers and sisters and supportive of one another in empowering one another.

- Indeed.

- So that's what it did for me.

- Yeah.

Shemekka, your work with the youth and I am Brilliant allows you to show us a different view of the talent that these young students have.

I think that shift in perspective is so important because of what the media can sometimes portray about the continent.

Share what you've seen these students be capable of in the folks that you work with in Sierra Leone.

- Absolutely.

Thank you for lifting that up.

'Cause it is a powerful innovation.

When you look at the statistics about continent-wide, this age range of young people today is the largest population in their 20s and that's across the continent.

And so, when you think about innovation and disrupting the norms, you know, they're communal challenges in community.

And I've saw these young people just flourish in spite of like, incredible, like, John Hopkins PhD scholars that started with the girls schools and was told no and failed time and time again.

But what she's learned through the innovation of applying grit to her life has transformed her and encouraged her to keep going.

And to see that spark of illumination and brilliance just be like a wildfire amongst young people when they're given a space to tell their truth.

I met a inventor.

He's just waiting on more funds.

He is looking at inventing a solar powered KK which is a motor transportation in Sierra Leone and he's got his pieces together, he's done his primary education and he's looking to make this manifest.

And now, we're able to connect him with someone that has successfully created a minibus in Sierra Leone off of electric power.

And it's the first in the country.

He's the first Black man to do that, right there in his community.

So, being able to partner intergenerationally has been very powerful working on the continent and then looking at ways to continue to inspire and motivate with positive narratives of survival and illuminating your brilliance, regardless of the hardships you're having to experience.

We saw that manifest time and time again, giving these young people a chance to tell their story and identify.

- And that's why I love being able to have this platform for you guys to share this kind of information because these are the stories that we don't hear all the time.

This is the narrative that we need to hear and see.

Naya, you've made it your mission to create these types of experiences, not just for groups like the one that we were with, but also for corporate partners.

So, talk about why that's important.

Why is that an important experience for them?

- Absolutely.

And I just wanna share, you know, being the founder of Utopia Global Wellness, the broader umbrella of what we do is we literally provide globally relevant wellness for corporations to really elevate mindful inclusion and belonging.

So, we sit at the intersection of wellbeing and belonging and mindful inclusion.

And so, this is a part of that.

And we do now offer these retreats, these global social impact retreats for organizations and corporations because it is important.

We live in a more global society than ever before.

The workplace is more global than ever before.

And we know that culture drives everything.

So, we know that if you're not able to create and foster an environment where people feel a sense of belonging, you're all also not gonna be able to retain the best talent.

And I think part of doing that is there has to be a culture shift through education, through learning and learning of the true appreciation for the differences that we bring and not try to make everybody homogeneous but really celebrating the rich, the beauty of the backgrounds, the cultures, the customs, the traditions, the religions, all of the things that make up the beautiful fabric of life.

And so, our next retreat will be in Bali.

Our next Utopia Global Wellness retreat will be in Bali, September 15th through the 22nd.

So, it's gonna be incredible and this is gonna be a women's CEO and leadership retreat.

But if you would like a curated retreat for your organization, your corporation, please visit us at utopialivingretreats.com.

- Wonderful.

Shemekka, and, oh, I am looking forward to Bali, by the way.

But Shameka, real quick, I know you took your kids with you on this last trip.

I'd love to hear just quickly, how was their experience and then sharing that moment with them, what was that like?

- It was very powerful for me knowing that they were literally standing in the house where their grandmother built, you know, and their family were able to continue this legacy and still continuing to build and looking at residual income for the family.

They were able to visit land purchase by their aunt and be able to see it from development.

Rough land is ours to so to know, you know, especially being African American as a mother, being able to have this close connection through my husband to land.

He knows his story, not only in fact, but essence.

It was so important for me to bring that into the children so that they could see that and experience it very young.

- I'm so glad they have that opportunity.

So, while many areas in Africa are rich and abundant with resources, there are just as many that are not.

The wealth gap is wide and opportunities for support are plentiful.

Shemekka, I'm coming back to you.

You just just mentioned, you know, your husband has, his family has land, your children were able to see that.

But some may wonder, you know, how do we even get connected if we're not related to someone?

How do we get connected to help all the way in Africa?

How I know that you've worked on I Am Brilliant and getting that started, how did you find ways to bridge that gap with knowledge and resources and access?

- I'm so glad you asked.

Great question.

I began with my network, who I'm connected to.

You know, I'm connected to a lot of women's groups, family groups, from the national all the way down to here within my community.

And it's important to me to find those that I'm connected to that it'll make sense, you know, for them to want to give back and reconnect and reengage.

And connecting with people that have like-minded passions help garner support when you're navigating.

And there are so many smaller ecosystems of organizations across the continent that are looking for individuals and leaders and businesses to connect and impact.

You know, this piece I'm wearing here, this neck piece, was designed by a family member of Michael's, who's an entrepreneur.

She's in Ghana, but she's born and raised in Sierra Leone and she wants to advance this line.

So being able to utilize the platform of Black Girl Magic Market and see how we can do intercontinental economic exchange is empowering for her as an entrepreneur.

But it also manifests what's possible at the factory, manufacturer level to increase these opportunities to impact community with what resources we have available in our hands.

- Yeah.

And Naya, I think I've shared with you before, but you and Shemekka really need to connect because I feel like you were intentional about connecting with local organizations while in Africa, like The Woman Boss and Awamary.

Talk to us about some of those connections and how you established them.

- Absolutely.

So I think the beautiful, I guess, journey of meeting Awamary is that she resided in North Carolina.

And so she first was here in Raleigh.

Her family is from The Gambia, her father is Gambian and her mother's from Spain.

And so we developed a friendship based on the work that we were doing around, I was in tech and she was leading Black Entrepreneurship Week, and I was working at Red Hat, and we ended up communicating, getting to know each other, hosting the pitch competition at Red Hat.

I ended up being a speaker for Black Entrepreneurship Week and the friendship and sisterhood blossomed.

When she went back home, and I've done a lot in that space of, I would say, Black tech and entrepreneurship here, being a part of the Google for Startups community and so forth.

When she went home and started The Woman Boss, I became a board member and a mentor.

So I've had the opportunity and the privilege to mentor multiple women entrepreneurs from The Gambia.

I drink my little moringa tea every morning.

I use my shea butters every day.

So shout out to Jan Arbella and Black Healing Skin Companies.

But these are the things that we can do, even as you said, Shemekka, cross continental to continue to pour in and give back.

And so if you're interested in global mentorship, you know, check out the womanboss.org.

But there's so many ways that we can stay connected, and so it is very important.

- Yeah, it is.

And what I'm hearing is this theme of communication, sharing thoughts, and ideas, and desires.

Shemekka, as you continue to bridge the gaps and engage with the diaspora, how does that economically impact our brothers and sisters on the continent?

- What I was even able to see instantaneously being on the ground in Sierra Leone last month was that they're just like us.

We need to be inspired, we need to be motivated.

And what we were there to do was show them pathways, share resources that exist from the Community Champion Certified Library where there's research and data that can support their pursuit in wanting to begin their own.

You know, another opportunity that we saw within our organization was to amplify ways to get involved civically, because those are where decisions are being made that are impacting your economic growth and pathways.

And so looking at ways to position these young people that have a large population.

They've gone to university and now they don't have a job.

You know, how can we tap into that, connect them with mentors, and create those opportunities for them to continue impacting their community locally, whether it's providing resources, being that local liaison, you know, especially in reference to the tourism, you know.

There's a lot of opportunity to tap into them growing as entrepreneurs, which a lot of them are turning to because there aren't the teacher jobs and the medical jobs that they were looking for because this is what their parents have told them.

Go to school, be a doctor, be in medical, be attorney, or finances.

Those are their only options.

So entrepreneurship has been a new pathway to help them illuminate their brilliance.

- Wonderful.

And Africa isn't the place of agony and pain as can be depicted at times.

It's a place that's on the rise.

It is being rebuilt for those that live there and those that visit.

To both of you, we've got about 30, 45 seconds left.

Starting with Naya, share with us your future plans to visit Africa and how those that are interested can give time to help.

You've already mentioned it, but let's reiterate that.

- Absolutely.

So future plans, our next retreat in West Africa is scheduled for 2024.

Still fine-tuning the details.

Definitely would love to return to Senegal and The Gambia, but also wanna check out Ghana.

And I've also been invited to attend a conference in Nigeria.

So let's, you know, see more of the continent.

Zanzibar is gorgeous, so just look for a lot more there.

Also, continuously looking at ways to invest and pour in in terms of being a mentor, in terms of spreading and cultivating global communities.

So those that wanna know more, check out utopialivingretreats.com.

- All right, Shemekka?

- I would say definitely reach out and connect with me at Shemekkaebony.com and let's book a discovery call so that we can plug you in immediately with the ground organizations that are empowering girls.

If that's your passion, let's get connected and move forward together.

- Beautiful.

Naya Powell, Shemekka Ebony, thank you so much for being here.

And we invite you to engage with us on Instagram using the hashtag BlackIssuesForum.

You can also find our full episodes on pbsnc.org/blackissuesforum, and on the PBS video app.

Thanks for watching.

I'm Kenia Thompson, I'll see you next time.

[upbeat music] ♪ - [Narrator] Black Issues Forum is a production of PBS North Carolina, with support from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation.

Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.