See Kayode Rap On Granville Street After Vancouver Visit For VNITY’s First MC AGM

With VNITY calling for Advocacy From Harambecouver's Multicultural Carnival program attendees and/or various impacted partners through the request of a General Meeting as required from African Great Lakes Networking Foundation, the lack of response from GLC would prompt  Harambecouver to honor that request for it’s first and last AGM. From this meeting it's remaining volunteers potential staff  and asset can be discussed on what should happen next. Holding on long enough for an emerging organization to say, we see what this program is looking to achieve and while we might not have much, as people we want to lend our support in the necessary work to establish this project and help the program continue into it’s third year of production says a lot. Having Kayode visit Vancouver for this meeting would increase community engagement in not only the various meeting attendees who were really only 3 to 5 people but of whom were representing other organizations with large memberships. While other individuals will meet the team for beer at Crafts Beer Market, it seems there was a growing interest in the community to advance this production forward and support where needed. According to Kayode Fatoba, while there’s a lot of work required to establish VNITY given the need to go through the society’s act and develop both the constitutions, organizational blueprints and officially call the organizations business to order; 

The interest of some of the attending community stakeholders of whom have been part of the Multicultural Carnival shared joint sentiments of the need for a more encapsulate organization in line with the core objectives of this Canadian targeted, DTES targeted programming meant that the mission and vision of the Multicultural Carnival within it having a focus on POC, Black, and Indeginous cultures while members of the organization accepting the out of Africa model as the theory supporting the organizations attempt at recreating Pangea as a demonstration of fair traders of whom have now resettled and or visiting Canada. The meet saw members of the Persian community come out, the integration of North Vancouver communities into the presentation means having a community open to telling us the story of Persian Empire and how they made their way to Canada. 

“My daughter is Canadian and her experiences will be much different from mine”, said Shahin, an new VNITY member as of August 24th 2019 of whom experienced the programming in it's nascent stages as Harambecouver under the leadership of African Great Lakes Networking Foundation and was inspired to get involved in supporting the establishment of this new organization. "It's important that the program has a more representative organization, I think that was something we could all agree on", said Shahin on if the outcome of the meeting was as he hoped. With everyone agreeing that Kayode would still need to travel back and forth within his growing commitments as a Torontonian and the need to support this programs advancement in Vancouver; there was optimism that things will eventually get better for the emerging artist and producer. Having VNITY be represented by community stakeholders of whom live and work in and around the Vancouver area also meant there could be a continued  advocacy body keeping the organization running in the absence of Kayode as it would currently be impossible to grow VNITY within such local buy-in. Having Kayode stay involved means VNITY has direct connections to Toronto. This already starts to expose the talents it presents to a market out of Vancouver, which might not have been apparent under the mismanagement by AGLNF. VNITY Multicultural Society hopes to develop it’s own partnerships, it’s own networks, secure better agreements, meet it’s deadlines to raise a healthy budget for hiring an operations and management team, develop strong negotiation and living wage terms for it's workers and creatives of whom are part of the growing stakeholder community who are really the ones coming into the organization to lend a hand.  While the meeting saw a unanimous vote in dissolving Harambecouver while the workers communicated their support in advancing VNITY as part of the required work associated with producing the third annual Multicultural production, there was still a range of research and development work necessary to make this happen. As the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, so as the seeds planted of which has grew into VNITY. August 24th marks the public launch of VNITY as an organization, commissioned and brought into existence through the gathering of Vancouver stakeholders impacted by the working conditions of African Great Lakes Networking Foundation, within a year of engaging members of the public, the media, local politicians, and health authorities of which a number of research are still yet to be published. VNITY hopes the mark of it’s second annual general meeting will see a larger crowd with a wide range of programming and subprogramming to bring the community out and entertained. As Kayode may not get to frequent the city of Vancouver often as a Torontonian of whom spends some of his time in Burnaby, the developing artist would be invited to a Rap cypher on Granville where the artist made some impressions with bystanders. Check it out! 

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@freshprinceoft.o visits Vancouver for #VNITY’s AGM and stops by Granville street to lay some rap! Captured by @baghdadishahin

A post shared by Skynation’s Lucky lady #LLIV19 (@lliv.ca) on Aug 25, 2019 at 10:13am PDT