MY Project USA celebrates Juneteenth

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- MY Project USA hosted a Freedom Forward Community Circle event Wednesday, allowing young people to talk about what freedom means to them.

Organizers said the event is designed to be a safe space for all to come, listen, and share ideas.

“We believe that creating this, a space that we are calling our freedom forward community circle, will provide an opportunity for older people and younger people to come together and talk about the real issues and come up with the real solutions that we can actually implement,” MY Project USA founder Zerqa Abid said.

Once a month, MY Project USA will host the event. Wednesday night’s topic was Juneteenth, which marks the day when the last enslaved people in the U.S. learned they had been freed -- more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

“I think it's very important for them to be a part of understanding what that means, what Juneteenth represents as a whole, you know, the identity of what liberation means for certain cultures, especially immigrant families from different backgrounds, who may have experienced certain kinds of oppression,” Bashir Ahmed, a youth program manager for MY Project USA, said.

A dozen people came to the event to learn about the Juneteenth holiday. A conversation was held to reflect on the history and also talk about the work that still needs to be done.

“The U.S. allows you to be free in different kinds of ways, right?” Ahmed said. “So that identity that we search for in the word liberation can mean something different from our youth growing in today's time versus somebody that was growing up 40 years ago or whatever, you know? So it's always they all add fresh and new ideas that can help cultivate that.”

Abid says the event will be held monthly, with July’s topic focusing on Independence Day. For more information, check the organization's website.