Peace! We need your support in expanding youth programming on St. Helena Island, South Carolina! Your support will help launch our first project initiative and fund Marshview Community Organic Farm's Summer programming; including De Gullah Cooking School and De Gullah Summer Experience. Help provide meals, school supplies, center facility repairs, farm equipment, and theater production materials for Gullah Geechee youth! My name is Becca Rayehanatou Haynesworth, I am the creator of the Memory House Project that will launch this summer in partnership with Marshview Community Organic Farms.

The Memory House Project is a collection of multi-medium initiatives and programs that highlight the socio-political necessity of the griot in African and African diasporic communities. The project is a culmination of two plus years of ethnographic research, volunteership, archival exploration, and community building throughout the Gullah Geechee Corridor (vicinal sea islands from Wilmington, North Carolina to Jacksonville, Florida). The Gullah Geechee are the descendants of enslaved Africans who inhabited the coastal sea islands of Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida. Our people within the Gullah Geechee Corridor have historically faced the threat of capitalist development and zoning changes initiated by the State that uproot autonomy and community control over land and resources. Help us defend African/Black communities in the Lowcountry against colonial violence!

The Reclaiming Ancestral Expression and Land Agency Initiative is an educational program that blends ancestral wisdom, art education, Africana/Black Studies, and Earth Stewardship to inform meaningful change amongst youth on St. Helena Island, SC, home to one the largest Gullah Geechee communities in the Lowcountry Region. The initiative aims to empower local Gullah Geechee communities to fight, organize and act against current land dispossession and cultural erasure on the island. The program centers Gullah Geechee Orature/oral history/folk traditions as wisdom teachings and inspires the role of the griot to become a collective duty in order to create a more sovereign Gullah Geechee Corridor, free of capitalist exploitation, colonial occupation and forced displacement. We want to integrate artistic expression and earth stewardship into our current practices of cultural preservation, cultural education and community organizing. The initiative will launch this summer at Marshview Community Organic Farm, a five acre farm located on St. Helena Island, SC, that works with young people to teach life skills, agriculture, and Gullah Geechee history and culture. We need your support to make this project possible!!

The Reclaiming Ancestral Expression and Land Agency Initiative is composed of an educational program and an apprenticeship component. The educational aspect will be conducted at Marshview's South Carolina Coastal Community Development Center and the apprenticeship will take place on Marshview's Organic Farm.

Cultural Education and Programming: June 2026

Farm Apprenticeship: July- September 2026

Location: South Carolina Coastal Community Development Center- 10 De Gullah Wy, St. Helena Island SC 29920

Support Youth Programming on St. Helena Island SC