AMEL has been honored to work with and help elevate the voices of inspiring young leaders from so many different backgrounds over the past few years. These incredible activists are advancing innovative initiatives, transforming the discourse and forging new paths for understanding, inclusion and equality in the United States and beyond. Over the coming months, we will be sharing their stories as part of the “New Voices” series, which we are kicking off with this interview with Isaac Cudjoe, a social entrepreneur; dialogue, diversity & inclusion facilitator; and AMEL Speaker.

What is the story that you share with audiences across the U.S. and why is it important?

Moving to the United States from Bogoso, Ghana when I was very young, meant that my life journey did not start with much clarity about who I was. At a young age, my parents made sure that I learned to respect and love our heritage and to value our customs and language. My parents didn't just teach me to be Ghanaian — they also taught me to be African. They taught me to celebrate all of Africa and its many diverse people. Because of this influential home training, I spent most of my adolescent years quite confused about what it meant to be Black in America. I found myself stuck between two worlds and two identities. One identity heard tales of Kwaku Ananse the trickster spider passed down by the Akan people, while the counterpart identity watched Little Bill on television. One identity learned about American poet Langston Hughes while his counterpart learned about Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe. In time, I learned that — from Kwame Nkrumah to Martin Luther King, from Kobe Bryant to Didier Drogba, and from my American born friends to my African born ones — we were one. The story I am sharing is a story of awakenings of consciousness. It is a story about the cold walls in slave castles and also the warm lunches in my school cafeteria. It is a story of love that begins with myself, but ends with the people and communities I have been immersed in. It is a story of redemption that I believe many can identity with.

Can you tell us about your activism work over the years and more recently with ReTurn and Brothers With Books?

I spent a lot of my undergraduate career immersing myself in the study of Africa and its affairs, as well as bridging the gap between various diaspora groups. I also served on the executive board of a club called the Global Leaders Alliance (GLA) and helped bring awareness about ongoing environmental, political, and social justice issues around the globe to our college campus. I attended a social entrepreneurs conference that guided me in supporting initiatives in Africa. And, as a youth member of the Bogoso Area Township Association, I got the opportunity to support initiatives in my birth country and lend a hand in work geared towards aiding my community where it needs help. I served as the Public Relations & Director of Outreach for The Hardy Trust, an international non-profit organization that aspired to change the world one village at a time, starting in a small town near Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. While I couldn't be there in person, I helped with the tools I had at the time - designing a website, launching numerous media pages, organizing events to raise funds for the Simikade Primary School, and building strategic alliances between the Germantown, Maryland base, and the Zimbabwe base.

More recently, in 2018, I teamed up with fellow MA students at Brandeis University to create the ReTurn Movement. ReTurn's mission is to mobilize migrants (the Diaspora) to reconnect with the places they have traced their lineages, empower them to reclaim their sense of identity, and unite them with locals living in the places they reconnected with to build more inclusive societies. And this time last year, June 2019, I teamed up with Kevin Isabelle-Peete to create “Brothers With Books” (BWB), a community action group in Maryland's Montgomery County. We started it to break down walls, build bridges, keep community leaders accountable and, above all else, promote a deep love for our neighbors. We were motivated by an experience of personal humiliation caused by the public system: a few years ago, Kevin and I were pulled over by four undercover police officers who interrogated us for hours, searched us and the car, fingerprinted us and more…simply because we “matched a description” — one that was solely based on the color of our skin. We transformed this experience into a fight for equity and improved access and literacy in our area, beginning with distributing free books to those who lacked equal access to reading material in the summer. In just its first year, Brothers With Books has already expanded to work together with other groups, schools and local governments in efforts to holistically to close the opportunity and achievement gap in Montgomery County. So far, BWB has distributed almost 20,000 books and given two scholarships to recognize remarkable growth in literacy of local middle school students. We’ve also held various events with community groups and helped organize efforts to make sure that protesters in the streets in recent weeks have gloves, water and information about "Anton's Law". We have also worked with the ReTurn movement to send two shipments of books to Ghana.

What are your future plans plans and ambitions?

My future plans are to live a life of service. It has very little to do with a job title and much more to do with impact. I seek to aid societies with effectively managing diversity. I desire to be a part of an organization that constructively addresses structural imbalances regarding the distribution of political and economic power in the world. I want to use the skills and tools I have gained to support peace-building efforts in Africa. After receiving a Master's degree in Conflict Resolution and Coexistence at The Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, I have decided to pursue a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration. There is more work to be done and I want to be better equipped to help fight for peace!

What motivated you to join the AMEL Speakers Bureau and training program?

The AMEL Speakers program has an intentional goal and mission that aligns well with the sort of young man I try to be, and the type of work I plan to champion in the future. Peace that lasts and peace that works is something very dear to my heart, so the opportunity to be trained under this program was not only an honor, but a dream brought to life. I am amazed by this program's wisdom in bringing various voices to the table, and happy to be a part of the work that is being done. In short, I am motivated by the very same goals that drive AMEL and its Speakers Bureau program.