the families and the youth in particular were several years and in multiple capacities of course one of the things that we always want to do is give opportunities for our youth to connect with the greater community so today's special presentation is to acknowledge some very important people within our community who have served for a long time served as especially mentors for young people coming up so we saw some people who are in the room today some of our local superstars and how i'd like to call them they've been community leaders here for a long time and i know when i came here fifteen years ago and i was looking for a place to go with my children and you know teach them something about ethiopian culture consider where i came from on the east coast we were literally the only if you know peons i mean people would be driving down the road like almost crashing like looking at us because we were very different than the community that lived there so ennis some of the highlights of what you saw they were speaking about culture in particular and bridging cultures coming from a country that has an immense amount of diversity everything that you see you know in the clothing you see through and here through dance and music through the food hairstyles i'll say i need to actually make a shout out to the hairstyles because before it was you know to be considered beautiful what do you do you just straighten your hair you know somehow i blowdry little micro ones to dread to you know wearing it all out to there's just such a diversity of styles and do you notice that on t v nowadays have you been noticing that i want you know when you watch t v or movies pay a lot of people won't acknowledge it but i'm acknowledging it and on a side no sorry to rant but one of my first favorite things when i saw the obama's move in with their children and i literally almost started crying because i said there are br in the white house like parade like the children of the president have the classics it shouldn't but you know the classic style i was so impressed we never saw that before unless they were you know maybe from workers which we never saw them represented anyway and so now unfortunately that's all gone going away but i want to hold on to that i want to remember and i wanted to add you know the speakers in here spoke about the importance of when we're coming from a different country different culture to come and share that because the next generation can't be raised exactly the same as the generation before just like when we come from back home when you have the expectation that they're going to be just the same way raised here it just doesn't work it's impossible and i know many families have tried it including my own it doesn't work it's definitely better to to build those bridges and one of the things that i thought was important is that one generation after another generation but your title also changes right so when you first come you might say oh yeah i mean g o p and the next generation next child the as an american if you're going american then the next one next one african american you know so in the end there are definitely blurred lines but the old line while blurred i think they should still be stark with the fact that bridge building has occurred so that's the absence of it for the people who spoke that are in here is there anything missing from i mean it's a quick synopsis but there may be doctor a little weekly if there's anything in there that we hear you want to add something i can pass through the microphone i also want to acknowledge in the storeroom somebody that we worked for a long time with the doctor paul jackson gets to  coming in from time to time there are a couple of us who used to go to the airport expecting yorker's to come and we welcome them and brought them to us here and have lunch with them together and some time in the nineteen eighty four eighty five eighty six eighty seven during that period of time nuclear they the funniest thing is people who normally hunt for fuel after after after their all that say ok who were the first people and how many were there  i had to be the first twenty five people who were here including the doctor and ezra to show me and others and before they had a church before they had anything any institutions at all and they'd just be no restaurants no church no social groups other than informal ones that they used to have so it's about their early group of people who came and how they established the institutions like the church like the various businesses that they had like big brother institutions like  s and clubs and so forth and of course it's about their struggles their successes and their failures black history month means for african americans and people who are becoming african americans what what ethiopian history means for ethiopians because the world sometimes actually thinks that you have no culture or you have no history you know when they ask if someday someone ask a black person the other day how many generations can you you trace back and this person said four maybe five and i and they don't know their culture they can't even answer the question so that's the answer if we don't want our kids having a vision of where they've been and where they're going we're up were hopeless diaspora because of the war or the war and pain africa is of americans from black colleges and went to ethiopia transfer technological education to ethiopia's and other words black from black black professors from black colleges war and angry and their welfare for president lincoln and congratulating him on the positive action that he took on behalf of africans under slavery in the united states this think that this is on both sides ethiopians and american children they don't really know this history so they think that they're in a mess or they think that they're you know their competitors rather than cooperate to people carry on that their tradition you know there are ethiopian snell who are teaching black studies courses so they're bringing a whole new pared down to african american studies and that's important because the going forward in terms of core collaborating and cooperative serious matter really one of the problems i see with your piece that whites here in this country what i what i what i try and what i say really strongly enough i could never to forget this if we forget we could be extremely disappointed this is extremely important separate ourselves if we if we try to separate from the black community where a lot of my advice is really to our ethiopians older or younger don't forget power of just getting some people in a room together and that interaction i think definitely something that i appreciate something that resonates with me and i'll do a little boy and thank you for your