The African Immigrants’ Commission of New York and Connecticut, “We are more effective at carrying out our mission” Mory Kouyate

The African Immigrants’ Commission of New York and Connecticut has organized on September 27,2025 its 6^th annual African Heritage Month. The African Journal has interviewed Mory Kouyate the chairman of the organization. He has been talking not only about the event but also the organization itself.

 

Mory Kouyate: First things first, I would like to personally thank the African journal online for always being there in our communities covering our events. You document and immortalize our works in the community and for this we thank you. 

 

The African immigrants’ commission of New York and Connecticut is now seven years old, you would say we are now stronger than before, we have gone through a few changes and a few streamlining to become more efficient at serving our community. Moreover, we have more useful partners now than before and we are more effective at carrying out our mission, which is to be the voice of our community, bring resources to our community and promote our arts and culture.

 

 

Mory Kouyate: This year the theme was ” Knowledge is Power” we decided to go with this particular theme because we used the event to educate our community, to empower the people with knowledge and information about cancer prevention and treatment. 

 

 

Mory Kouyate: Organizing this event remains extremely important to me because this is the only event that is organically organized by the ordinary members of our community not by an elected official. It is highly important for our community not to concede things that we can do ourselves to someone else, we must get in the habit of doing things on our own not relying on an elected official to do things for us. What if that person is not there anymore and we get a new person that does not support our agenda, at this point we will not have the structure in place to continue. Thus, we encourage the ordinary members of our community to keep organizing their own African Heritage month events. This has been the concept that we laid out since the beginning. At the same time, we are grateful to all the elected officials that have stepped up, to organize their own events. This is very positive and uplifting to our community, we encourage them to continue.

 

 

Mory Kouyate: I do not regret anything after 6 years of doing the event. Every year, we learn, we grow, we get more experience, and we are stronger as a community-based organizing (CBO). 

 

My biggest satisfaction is always the ability to promote our community, our arts, culture, and show our strength by recognizing and highlighting our community leaders, business, youth and political leaders. 

 

 

Mory Kouyate: The 6th edition was better organized, we had more traditional dancers, the West African food was amazing, and we had more companies that tabled which brought more resources to our community. For instance, 

BOLD Cancer Wellness/Psychosocial Oncology Program at Montefiore Einstein Comprehensive Cancer Center conducted registration for free cancer screening, EmpowerHER Program, Montefiore Medical Center / Infectious Disease Clinic conducted on the spot HIV testing, African Law Enforcement organization/ NYPD conducted recruitment and Metro Plus donated free school bags for the children just to name a few. Last year we did not have as many resources.

 

 

Mory Kouyate: This year our online registration was very effective. We pre-registered a significant number of people online and our attendance was slightly bigger than last year. Nonetheless, we have noticed that our event always coincides with the United Nations general assembly, and a lot of people have had to choose between attending our event or participating in the activities organized by the UN. 

 

Therefore, in order to grow our audience even more in the future We are in discussions to conduct our event either on the first Saturday of September or the first Saturday of October.  This way we will be able to avoid our event date conflicting with the activities of the United Nations general assembly. 

 

 

Mory Kouyate: We do not just honor African leaders only; we honor people   of every background race and greed. We in general receive nominations from the community members, we try to do our due diligence to vet the nominees, make sure they deserve to be honored during our event. All are welcomed.

 

 

My message to our community is that we should always strive to elevate ourselves, at the same time elevate our community. Let’s all motivate and support the leaders that are willing to sacrifice time and money to put our community in the best light possible.