How We Can Succeed as a Community

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On Thursday July 15, 2010 Brown Condor posted this piece by Meeraf Taddesse titled “The Price of Celebrity, Forgetting Your Own?” In the article, Meeraf discusses how many successful people in our community do not seem to reach back to the community to bring others to success. She also points out how especially high profiles Habesha do not appear to mentor and guide others into non-traditional Habesha professions such as sports, arts, and fashion. I too used to think that there weren’t that many of us entering non-traditional fields until I began a project with my sister and I became exposed to how many of us are working incognito in television, movies, arts, music, and more.

I wondered, like Ms. Taddesse, why these celebrities did not make more noise and make opportunities known to those in the community who might be interested in similar fields. In part due to a different project I was working on and part out of sheer curiosity, I sent out a list of questions to people in the community regarding what it’s like to help their people. I sought out those people who currently are, have in the past, involved in helping individuals or groups in our community. I mainly wanted to know what kept people – especially succesful people – from volunteering to help the community. The bottom line that I heard from the majority of the group was that helping needs to be an organized effort in order to reach as many people as possible and, as several people put it, we are a difficult group of people to organize. According to those with experience, here are some of the reasons why it’s hard to help our community (I use my experiences to highlight people’s points rather than theirs since I promised responders anonymity):… Read More