Inaugural Speech

Inaugural Speech (video)

June12, 2008

Transdiaspora Network's Inaugural Speech

When the idea to create Transdiaspora Network came to my mind, it had all the elements of a big utopia where psychology and anthropology, along with other social disciplines, can interact creatively with the challenges that our under-privileged communities face every day. My daily interaction with HIV positive individuals gave me a sense of urgency and made me a witness to the effects of the HIV epidemic that pervade every aspect of family members' lives. This helped me appreciate even more the importance of forging new alliances and strategies to better help, culturally speaking, under-served social groups and to promote good quality services.

In April 2007, I was in a conference where Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, addressed important issues about sustainable development. He gave a magnificent speech and mentioned something completely new to me: the notion of Green GDP. The Green GDP involves not only our generation, but also future generations and I got inspired to do something against HIV epidemic, which is killing our community's Human GDP.

At that time, my dream of Transdiaspora Network did not have even a name. Some new interrogations started boiling in my brain and I asked myself how we could help the Brooklyn community to be part of sustainable solutions on the HIV prevention issue. I wanted to give some green to the red color of HIV, a hope for generations to come. It was the 15th of May, 2007. I started suffering the contractions of giving birth to a dream called Transdiaspora Network. (women know what I am talking about as well as my good friend Frank Cohn, the Executive Director of Globalhood). All of a sudden, I became the father of this little baby, affectionately known as TDN.

Coming as a utopia, first, and later as a promising idea, TDN started walking into reality in August 2007. This "hyper-local, yet transcendent and progressive" project, as one of my friends like to say, was picked up by the Legal Aid Society in order to register the organization at the Department of State in Albany. On April 9th of this year, TDN received its Certificate of Incorporation thanks to the superb job of Brian Greene and Michael Caputo, lawyers of the private firm Stroock, Stroock and Lavan.

As TDN's founder, I got the primary vision to transform negative facts into positive outcomes and make our organization a good vehicle to engage the community in finding more meaningful solutions to the HIV prevention problem. The Brooklyn-based Caribbean community has three big challenges to tackle (before it is too late). First, the HIV infection rate among youth is getting astonishingly higher every year. Second, Caribbean-descent youth are not engaged at large in HIV prevention activities within their own communities. Third, the youth population faces several barriers to access culturally-oriented solutions through the current biomedical and individualist approach on HIV prevention.

TDN is connected to the future and our main goal is not only to prevent HIV among at-risk Caribbean-descendent youth, but to be innovative using the concepts of culture and tradition to promote an inclusive environment in our approach.

In less than a year of existence, we have already done few things to move the organization forward:

Our website was launched successfully on December 15th, 2007. The site has generated good comments and excellent impressions about its design and informative content. We have nearly reached the milestone of one thousand visitors from 26 countries. I want to thank Eduardo Ortiz, our web strategist for his outstanding effort.
Because of TDN, last January, I was awarded with the 2008 We Are All Brooklyn (WAAB) Fellowship, which is given to outstanding young leaders serving the Brooklyn community. Thank you Bob Kaplan for making me part of your visionary initiative.
In March, we conducted an HIV Prevention Awareness survey in Crown Heights in partnership with Columbia Community Outreach and the Crown Heights Community Mediation Center. Thank you Amy Ellenbogen for being our guardian angel from the very beginning.
In April, we received our first Technical Assistance grant to develop a community blog and to implement an HIV prevention confidential online service for at-risk youth. YouthBridge-NY also awarded TDN with the �Bridging the Gap� grant to launch a project focused on health and diversity among young community leaders. Thank you Sallie Lynch, our development coordinator, for believing in us.
Finally, in May, TDN participated in AIDS Walk New York 2008, the largest and most successful AIDS Walk to date.

As you can see, we have worked very hard to formalize Transdiaspora Network's community-oriented profile. We have an ambitious agenda ahead and the commitment to move forward the dreams of our Caribbean community. Our trip to success has just start. Join us in 2008 and I will be honored to have you as part of our team. Thank you all for your support and good will and please do not forget to talk things out.

Ariel Rojas, MS, MA
Founder & President

Glossary

Transdiasporic: TDN has coined the term transdiasporic youth to describe a generation where the ethnic awareness may occur in response to a variation in the sociocultural milieu, a change in cohort or generational group as well as on the degree of ethnic heterogeneity in the daily life. Even though, they has entangled its norms, values and cultural identity in a different context of socialization, geography of imagination and social subjectivity from their immigrant parents, the identity behaviors of these youth are still related to the Caribbean as a social space of reference.

Peripheral communities: it does not necessarily mean status of marginality since these communities are not in isolation nor are they in a contextual vacuum; however, certain areas in Brooklyn are under-privileged social spaces where statistics have shown that educational level, occupational achievements and household income are substantially lower than other urban communities in New York City. In the global context, the Caribbean islands fall in the Developing Countries category, which means they are peripheral communities as well.

Transcreated solutions: TDN has coined this term to reflect our level of cultural proficiency, which give us the opportunity to develop culturally appropriate channels of communication that can help us reach our target population in a language they understand both literally and metaphorically. We adapt our solutions to the youth's needs and ensure that his/her cultural identity and values are accurately aligned with solutions created in the interaction. We are not translating only words, ideas or concepts from our professional backgrounds. Instead, we are trying to connect with the feelings and the mood of our audience usually transmitted at affective level.