The founders
Since 1976, the father and mother JAH have given a dynamic to the Black diasporic community in Paris.
Arrived in France since their youth, one from the Caribbean, father JAH (Guadeloupe); the other from the continent, mother JAH (Cameroon).
After their personal journeys, these two giants met in 1976 to engage in a Pan-African mission to this day.
It all started with the creation of the weekly magazine Black Hebdo which informs and invites each Afro-descendant to contribute to the future of the Black people. They then opened the 1st Pan-African Cultural Center under the name of Dambala Family where they have been organizing Pan-African cultural and historical events since 1977 including the Kwanzaa. As Kemites, they organized, as early as 1977, the celebration of Kwanzaa, the publication of black greeting cards and calendars as well as a summer camp for the children of the black community in Great Britain.
Charity
Donations
Authors such as Maryse Conde from Guadeloupe and Seydou Badiane Kouyate from Mali, as well as musician messengers such as Joseph Hill from Jamaica's Culture and Fela Anikulakpo Kuti from Nigeria will share their experiences with the youth. The meeting with the reggae singers Cimarons, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and the I three will lead them to join the people of Jah Rastafari and his prophetic mission to accomplish the Repatriation, that is to say the Return to the Ancestral Mother Earth. They will henceforth take the name of the Jah Family.
Charity
Donations
To prepare themselves, they will go to Guadeloupe where they will live in the footsteps of the Neg Maroon ancestors. During seven years of self-sufficiency in the mountains, they learned to live in harmony with nature and gave birth to three of their four children. They gathered a corps of young volunteers and succeeded in reaching Mother Earth in Benin on April 15, 1997, with their four children and two young volunteers.
For 22 years, as pioneers, the first unit of Guadeloupe making the choice of the Great Return to the Ancestral Mother Earth, by their existence and their advocacy they have been asking the question of the administrative recognition of the Right of Return. Their place of life, a space of 4 hectares granted by the Beninese State in the classified forest of Pahou, commune of Ouidah, is the cultural Embassy of the Pan-African Diaspora and the People of JAH and serves as a first reception place for the volunteers to the Return, in the rural sector.
They also work with children at Ecolojah, their Pan-African and ecological elementary school, established to provide an educational alternative where Pan-African history, agroecology and utilitarian arts and crafts are part of the curriculum to give each student the Love and pride of their Pan-African heritage. They are in constant connection with those from the English-speaking hemisphere who have made the great comeback, especially in Ghana, Ethiopia and South Africa. They look forward to seeing other Afrodescendants from Guadeloupe and Martinique fulfill the Prophecy of the Return and confirm the Victory of the Ancestors. The Road is long, from yesterday to tomorrow, but as His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I teaches us "Unity is the Priority".