benet and today i'm going to interview come out and we're going to ask you few questions so we're going to start with can you tell us about yourself and your relationship with the  and right now i'm a graduate student at howard university pursuing my master's degree in african studies and i will graduate this fall and also i'm studying i'm heart i first met  here since then this is my third time and when i met him it was at the conference and he offered me a book he had heard i had helped out hope i hope to give a few little information about colonel john robinson and in a presentation i was actually given by julius garvey that was marcus garvey sun he was there at the conference in giving a presentation about his you want to come up when i give my presentation and say a little bit about robinson so i did and then after day yeah he gave me a biography of john robinson so i was the first time that i met when to be out i was before i was a master's student and so since then i've been studying ethiopian and african american relations and i've been working with davis on different events different or initiatives to his organization pan technical association so could you tell us your relationship between davis please yes i said i met him four years ago and we became friends also colleagues currently i am working with his organization the pan african technical association and i am the university affairs liaison essentially that is to build partnerships with different universities and the first project that we're working on is trying to connect our university in washington d c with addis ababa university here in addis and so that's that would be for i'm hard language study abroad program so i'm kind of like the pilot student i came out are my own values volunteer you know putting myself out there to china connected to entities and you know so far we've been able to connect them at least via email and virtually and so we just want to get something official and something their partner could also be a part of so i'm also work with brother yeah i felt him organize a fundraiser in d c for potter and also we had  some of us who went on the bible conference in ethiopia we formed a group called african americans for sustainable african development and we've been able to raise funds to support different initiatives in ethiopia defers one was to provide a grinding mill for a nonprofit called medart and helps the women in your area annette town it's a money generating system for them because they have the grant they can grind the grains and other people can come to them and pay so that was one thing we did and then we also supported jamaican roster foreign development school in charge of money we gave them a financial contribution and so more efforts like that are what we're trying to do what would you say are the major accomplishments of patter here in these well i would say the number one major accomplishment was the work their brother yars been doing it has come to fruition where the colonel john c robinson american center you know he was one of the people who was lifting robinson's name when nobody knew him he kind of dug him from the grave if you were i don't know best of best if that's the best analogy but i mean people were started forgetting about his history so he was one of the ones who actually really brought his name back and helped to set this whole thing up also the naming of the seven  seven boeing plane after john c robinson i was another major accomplishment but besides that i would say the number one accomplishment would be the stem classes data that potter has offered to various organizations and schools in this such as the salaam to family project and also st joseph school and other entities i know they've been able to do some workshops here at the robinson center and raising school gathering school supplies for students and just building their relationship between those of us in the diaspora and those of us on the  a long story but i can give you the abridged version so colonel john c robinson from the beginning he's either recently from gulfport i'm sorry he's originally from mississippi i forget the exact city but i know he's really from mississippi but he was a graduate of a university and he studied auto mechanics and engineering and so he used he used his knowledge of auto mechanics engineering and he transferred it to become a pilot to being a becoming a pilot he originally the school that he was the flight school that he wanted to get into which was in chicago it was named after the wright brothers then at this time in the one nine hundred twenty s it was segregation a lot of discrimination against african americans so he was not allowed to come into the school so the way he learned how to become a pilot  became a janitor and he used to sweep up in the back of the classroom extra extra slow i mean did a teacher started noticing that is where he was doing and say oh wow this he's studying and he allowed him to stay and study but not to enter into the school and so the way he got into the school was he he organized a group of african americans who were interested or interested in flying like him and they actually built the plane and they are they invited t instructor to come out and look at the plane they didn't think he was going to actually test it but the instructor he actually tested the plane and flew the plane and it worked and so after that they said ok we're we're allow you to come into the school that's how he got accepted into the searching for support and they heard today we're getting a lot of support from the african american community and they wanted to make this support more than just protests more didn't just rallies more than just raising funds they wanted to see if they can get some technical support and so they were looking for pilots because they knew that they had no pilots there i mean they had they only had a few planes an italian had a four air corps so there was something where they were lacking and so they came across a gentleman named john robinson and he reached out to him and he actually came to ethiopia and flew during the time invasion he was here in one thousand thirty five i think they only had a handful of planes but he flew them and he delivered messages like he was a courier so he would deliver messages from one part to another part he was also a scout so he may go scout to see were dia talents are camping out and come back and he had he has several close calls where he had to run for he didn't have he didn't have bullets attached to his plane he had to run from his life from the italians and so he had to do tricks and go up into the sky and go into the clouds and maneuver through the mountains and he was a big help although he was unable to secure a utopian victory he was you know critical in bringing medical supplies critical and delivering messages and also was the e personal private pilot and that's where he became a colonel that's where he got the rank of colonel and he was the commander of ethiopia's air corps even though there were no much of the air corps but i mean what the what there was of it he was the  and they came and helped to train some of the first ethiopian pilots who ended up going into the air force and then they ended up going into the open air lines so i thought i was going to tell the short version but american media center under his name can you tell us more about this yes i can tell you a little bit more about this i think it was under veiled earlier this year in february this is when all of this came to fruition but this is been many years in progress i know by the hour davis has been coming back and forth ethiopia for over twenty years and especially within the last ten years i know he was working to to make this happen as far no engineer yeah davis he used to work for boeing their company out in seattle for several years so he has a relationship with them and he's a pilot himself so he can fly a small plane so he's a really amazing guy airspace engineer a really amazing guy happy to know him i honestly improve my life tremendously and  originally one part of the project before they could name these things after robinson they were searching for his grave because he actually passed away in ethiopia he died in a plane crash in the mid forty's or yeah i think it was the mid fort s and he no one knew where his grave was so there for a long time they were searching and they finally found his grave like a year or two ago and so i know yeah i was so part of that part of the finding of his so what kind of relationship do you expect and do you have any ideas or you know pointers to get out you know i expect a good relationship i know i expect maybe a little bit of having to learn and learn about each other in the beginning and maybe being a little bit slow but as i think then once the students meet each other you know share common interests that you know they'll realize that they're they're all in this together and they have a lot more so similarities than they have differences you know i see the sky's the limit definitely a language exchange you know some of the students coming from united states could be learning a mark and so many of the  ethiopian languages and some of the students who may need help ordinary english they could be learning more english that's one thing technology transfer a lot of things are going on here at the center you know i c s i  being a big part of it you know coding robotics and especially media you know being able to document our stories because that's one of the most important things are and why i appreciate m m r t i is that you know there's so many things that are going on but people don't know about it you know you have to be able to document it and share it with people so that they know about it otherwise for them it's not something that exists you know there's many people who don't know they're a colonel john robinson exists and many people don't know that there is any relationship between need therapy and an african american history whereas there's a very long relationship it may not be the biggest loudest relationship in your face but if we need  document it more and then we can spread it around so i see a lot of documentation coming and as far  i would suggest people have open mind as far as the programming just you know outings field trips nine hundred just staying in a one room i think the best thing would be for them to you know travel the country together or travel to a city and  eat together don't just stay in the classroom that's what i would suggest so i heard you speak you know i'm hard earlier you're really good at it you know first someone i can read and write too so that's very very impressive so in terms of social media it's great for you to connect with one another and we have video conferences t google hangouts is one of the examples for blasts what other activities do you suggest to develop this relationship so definitely whatsapp that's been my saving grace out here because when you have  can text them is long as you have good enough service which some places you don't you can do video conferencing and i would suggest you know what the other social media venues i mean outlets borders won't be a difference it won't make a difference where they are also you tube i thing you tube is a very powerful tool and sewer a lot of free information is and where a lot of people go maybe as their first as their first preference before they actually start to read or you know get other sources youtube may be the one they go to first and and you can also go viral that's a good thing it's like you make one video and you can go viral and then people are following you and watching your other videos so yeah definitely one thing to add up with is we have a you tube how to edit experiences and he also taught science in technology classes like i know one was a solar powered car solar you know not i know if not a big car but a toy car to create family they seek to bring together young people who have lost their parents and by whatever means they're not able to be with their biological parents and they bring them together with women who have you know lost her husband for various means and they make them into a family so that's one of their models and they have another model of our which would outreach to people who are in april their main goal is to create a family atmosphere for people who have you know lost their family and they do a number of different things but that's their main go fees every summer it is an english language summer camp i mean they partner with organizations like parts and other organizations and they pretty much take care of them you know they provide for they provide for their needs and they give them an environment where they have other people who are like them and it's an alternative to the orphanage if you will you know so that's what they do they provide alternative to that so what kind of volunteer work have you been involved with for you know that you can actually help you know advice students from so there is another a number of ways to get involved with salaam to the way that i got involved which was this summer we're through the english language summer camp and essentially is a six week long camp they have three sessions they're broken down a two week sessions i did the first session and i'll be going back intermittently for the last session  essentially you have youth there younger students that come in the morning teenagers come in the afternoon and you help them with their english language skills and it's a very nice can't it's not simply based on grammar it's about life skills so through their teaching english through words is a book that came out of the seven habits of successful people and in a major your one for younger people it is seven habits for successful teens and so they're using their model of some of those some of those habits be proactive think before you act i have goals in mind and so on and so forth and so we create discussion  t discussion based and it is a really good can't you know it normally go it's started there beginning of july and goes to like  august so i six weeks was the main purpose of your trip so the main purpose of coming to the opiate was for me to conduct research for my master's thesis which is  so i wanted to visit some sites like this and then also there was one to go and the other goal was to study i'm hark i did not intentionally i did not think that i would be able to register into official in official heart class at  e university but i was able to and so i'm taking the intermediate level of speaking and listening and my my goal is to duplicate my experience for other howard students i want to make this something more formal where howard students can come from washington d c and many of them they're from all over the world and maybe they may even be ethiopian americans themselves and they can come here and study the language and so that's what i'm working on now working with the heart language literature and folklore department at that is how about university and coordinating between them and african studies department and the center for african studies and the department of world languages over at howard university and so it's going to happen we was going to happen you know people have already expressed interest i've introduced him via email and it's just about getting things on very fast city and it reminds me like new york or something like that it's just so many people you know there's a saying about ethiopia to ethiopia is a museum of peoples and like that's so true because just like i  sometimes i just find myself just not trying to stare people too much but just looking at how no diverse there people look i mean you have every type of