Diaspora Diaries

Tamara Dawit never felt she fit in--neither at her virtually all-white high school nor at the many family gatherings she attended while growing up in Ottawa. "There was a lot of time in high school when I was depressed, I didn't feel I had purpose in my life, that I had anything I could contribute to society. I think part of that is teenaged angst, but it was also because I didn't believe I belonged in my family. I grew up mostly with my mother's side of the family, the white side," says Dawit.

Of Ethiopian, Ukrainian and Scottish descent, Dawit was different, a minority in Kanata, the suburb in Canada's capital where she spent her first 19 years.

"There was prejudice over me being Ethiopian and the ideas people had about that," says Dawit. "I remember in elementary school Plan Canada sponsored a child from a developing country. There was a picture at my friend's home of this little skinny girl and her brothers used to tease me saying, there you are on that fridge, we are going to send you money in your country."

These experiences could have paralysed Dawit or destroyed her self-esteem, but she fought against the prejudice she experienced as a child and now spends most of her time engaging in anti-racist education and dispelling the myths and the misinformation perpetuated about people of Ethiopian descent and other immigrants of colour.

Tamara with children

"As a young woman, a person of colour, as an African Canadian, I saw a lot of ignorance about people from other countries, about immigrants and refugees in Ottawa. Now wherever there is ignorance, I challenge it, I want to act to eradicate it," says Dawit.

Her latest effort to fight ignorance and prejudice took her to Ethiopia in the fall on the eve of Ethiopia's millennium celebrations, scheduled for the Ethiopian Julian calendar date of September 11, 2007.

Under the umbrella of The 411 Initiative for Change, a non-profit organization Dawit established in 2005, she and her team used art to inspire Ethiopian youth to tell their stories.

"The objective of the project was to work to reshape people's opinion and imaging of Ethiopia," says Dawit, "specifically focusing on the information we receive in North America about children in Ethiopia. We wanted to ensure their voices, their dreams, their realities and issues are heard and documented rather than hearing about them through adults and NGO workers".

411's team worked closely with 100 young people in four regions, equipping them with disposable cameras to take photographs of how they see their lives and their world.

"Some kids talked about HIV through their photos and we plan to use some of that in our HIV school program," says Dawit.

Tamara in southern Ethiopia

Since 411 was launched, Dawit and a small multicultural team have been engaging young people through art in creative collaborations that examine a social issue or spread a social message. Their teacher resource kits are available to high schools on everything from what it is like for a young person to live with HIV AIDS, abject poverty or war, to the impact of racism on self-esteem and identity. 411 even provides tool kits on how to make the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child an engaging part of high school learning.

Apart from her volunteer position as the Executive Director of 411, Dawit works with Plan Canada, developing youth centric strategies to spread the word about human rights issues affecting children.

From hip hop concerts to comedy, spoken word poetry, and music performances, Dawit collaborates with celebrity teen idols like Melanie Durrant, Dwayne Morgan, Equinox199, Rochester, K'Naan and others to promote cultural understanding and raise awareness about international social and humanitarian issues affecting youth.

In a recent Plan Canada sponsored trip to Haiti, Dawit took Japanese Canadian singer George Nozuka along, a big draw for "tweens" and teenaged girls. "The Haiti project focused on child domestic workers and engaged a group of young Haitians in making a film. We trained them on filmmaking techniques and helped them shoot the film. It re-enacted a drama about a child domestic worker and what happens to her as she dreams about going to school and seeing her mother, but has to clean the house," says Dawit. "It's much like a Haitian Cinderella story."

Like the Haiti project, Dawit plans to make a documentary about the Ethiopia trip, which she hopes will be seen not only by students but by adults.

"It's not just about showing the projects to the Canadian public. We want to bring back the results of the project to the Ethiopian people in Canada to show them there are things back home they can be proud of and there are ways they can play a part in effecting change in Ethiopia," says Dawit.

She also hopes to help give Ethiopian youth a voice. Young people in Ethiopia have no place in the mass media. I think by working with the local media, this project is a way to get voices of young people heard throughout the country."

Tamara filming

As a teenaged high school student in Canada, Dawit used her voice and that of others to dispel stereotypes and to educate, organizing her school's first Black History Month lecture and bringing in a Holocaust survivor to talk about the Nazi genocide against Europe's Jews.

Her research on her ancestors' homeland has taught her much about the communist-led genocide that took the lives of more than 100,000 Ethiopians, its rich Christian religious history and the fact that her father's birthplace was the only African nation never colonized by Europeans.

Despite its recent history of famine and war, "I see Ethiopia as a country full of hope, full of opportunity with young people who are resilient and who are working locally to impact change. They have the capacity to help themselves and are not looking for a hand out, but help to become self-sufficient," says Dawit, who hopes her project will help empower young Ethiopians to chart a new path for their country. "Like in all countries around the world, the future of the new millennium will eventually rest in young people's hands," says Dawit.