The Kwanzaa Gala / Rites Of Passage Ceremony
The Bridge Builders has chosen the Kwanzaa season to celebrate the
passage of its college freshmen. The authentic rites of passage
ceremony will feature African drumming, dance, music, step and spoken
word performances by The Prospective Gents Club and Imminent Ladies of
Virtue. This Ceremony lights the season's only human kinara and
features an Ancestral Call (where we call the names of local and famous
people who died in 2007). After the program, adult guests are invited
to meet the passage initiates at a dance in the rotunda of the
Performing Arts Center.
The Rites of Passage ceremony is held annually in a beautiful civic auditorium to honor the college students from the Prospective Gents or Imminent Ladies of Virtue clubs who have completed one of The Bridge Builders' Rites of Passage programs. Also known as the Kwanzaa Gala, this special formal ceremony serves as the two Clubs' main fundraising event for its scholarship fund. The 2-hour presentation also is the Pacific Northwest's largest Kwanzaa celebration uplifting youth.
In honor of the African American holiday The Bridge Builders will remember during the ceremony those ancestors who crossed over in death during that year, light a human kinara and make the daily Kwanzaa proclamation. Also a prominent musical artist's work is infused into the ceremony to honor him or her as well as tie in the event theme.
After the ceremony, festive celebrations are held for both the students with a fun activity night and their parents with an Initiates Ball.
Kwanzaa is the widely celebrated African American spiritual holiday that Dr. Maulana Ron Karenga created on Dec. 26, 1966. It is based on the cultural principles of a theory called Kawaida. The Kawaida was established to put forth the belief that social revolutionary change for African Americans can occur by exposing individuals to their cultural heritage. During the 1960's, Karenga noted that community-based groups were functioning by using a variety of ideologies in their approach to assist African Americans in the quest to obtain equality.
Karenga wanted to bring these approaches together under one framework. At the time, African Americans had no single holiday to call their own. When Kwanzaa was born, it became a way for African Americans celebrate their culture in a white-dominated society.
Kwanzaa is a spiritual, festive and joyous celebration of the oneness and the goodness of life. It claims no ties to organized religion and instead, is all encompassing. The focus of Kwanzaa is centered around the seven principles of Nguzzo Saba with a particular emphasis on the unity of African American families. It is seen as a time for gathering and rededicating our lives to the following seven principles.
UMOJA - UNITY: To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and within the race.
KUJICHAGULIA - SELF DETERMINATION: To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves.
UJIMA - COLLECTIVE WORK AND RESPONSIBILITY - To build and maintain our community together and to make the problems of our brothers and sisters our own. Together, we will solve them.
UJAMAA - COOPERATIVE ECONOMICS: To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit together from them.
NIA - PURPOSE: To make as our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
KUUMBA - CREATIVITY: To always do as much as we can, in the way that we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
IMANI - FAITH: To believe with all of our hearts in our parents, our teachers, our leaders, our people, and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.
These 7 principles are the undoubtedly the most important aspects of Kwanzaa because they help African Americans relate to the past in order to understand the present. From there we are then in a position to deal with the future.