After two years of virtual celebrations, the African Cultural and Deve-lopment Association’s (ACDA) annual Emancipation Day festivities return to the National Park on August 1.
This year’s event, the 29th, will be celebrated under the theme ‘Cele-brating the Enduring African Spirit Through Cultural Expression’, with a sub-theme: ‘Realizing the Guyanese Dream Through Community Economic Empowerment.’
As usual, there will be food, folk games, drumming, dances, fashion shows, craft, competitions and other activities to stimulate the interaction of everyone from all walks of life. There will also be international, regional and local performers.
The festivities will commence at 10 am and end at 8 pm. A small fee will be required to enter the gates, which will increase for those entering the National Park after 5 pm.
Meanwhile, a series of activities, which began on June 23 and will end on July 31 is currently being hosted across Georgetown in the run up to Emancipation Day. These include a one mic series, a launch event, a drumming festival, a musical workshop, and an Emancipation spiritual tribute.
A release from ACDA explained that every year, a country is chosen as the focus in order to educate people of African descent about where their ancestors are from and the struggles that they went through.
“…This year, 2022, the focus will be Zambia. A country with a very rich African influence, history and culture,” the release said. “While many of the villages honoured by ACDA with the spotlight of the Emancipation celebrations have a common history of purchase by freed slaves, the community being focused on in 2022 is a unique settlement. For emancipation 2022 ADCA honours Zambia in Region Six…”
