Under the radar, these nine people are changing and uniting Lexington
Elisha Mutayongwa moved to Lexington in 2012 from a Ugandan refugee camp, and soon noticed that the population of Swahili speakers was growing. Many African refugees didn’t have access to resources they needed or to people who understood what they were going through.
So last year, he and his brother started the Rafiki Center out of his home. COVID-19 stymied his first efforts for a summer camp for children, but his Facebook presence helps fellow Congolese and other Swahili speakers here. Swahili is the national language of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, and is spoken in several other African countries as well.
“Most people just don’t know about the issues that affect us,” Mutayongwa said. “We wanted to help with communications and advocacy.”
A lot of that help has included helping people get through a pandemic with jobs and food. The Rafiki Center also keeps people updated with notices about job openings, language classes and school information.
Mutayongwa was recently surprised with a phone call from the Black Prosperity Initiative at the Blue Grass Community Foundation, telling him he’d won $2,500 in the first round of the Grassroots Black Leadership Awards.
“I was surprised,” he said. “It’s great when you work and put your ideas together and then when you see people embrace the same vision ... it’s really uplifting and encouraging.
Mutayongwa and the Rafiki Center is exactly the kind of under the radar, grassroots organization in Lexington that the Prosperity Initiative wanted to encourage, along with eight other winners, said co-chair Lisa Higgins-Hord.
“We want this prize to recognize that a culturally rich community is thriving through these emerging groups of leaders,” Higgins-Hord said. “It’s also allowing us to educate our community as a whole on what is really happening in our communities when there are gaps and needs and how we take something that’s a gap and make it something beautiful to support our community. That is what these change agents and uniters are doing —they’re all using passion and purpose to elevate their community and it’s a beautiful thing.”
Tonya Lindsay, for example, describes herself as someone who isn’t much interested in publicity as she works to help families survive gun violence. She started in 2013 when her 16-year-old son was shot and killed, tunneling her grief into Sisters & Supporters Working Against Gun Violence (SWAG).
The group provides resources and support to grieving families, as well as trying to educate the community and government officials about the impact of gun violence.
“It’s nice when you are the boots on the ground and you don’t ask for recognition, but your work is not going unnoticed,” Lindsay said.
Sharon Murphy also works under the radar with her personal Facebook page. Back in 2014, she started posting about how important it was to vote in local elections, which meant paying attention to local candidates, including down ballot ones, like judges and school board races. She’d post about candidate forums, public events and important issues in every race.
“People would comment or say thank you, and then it just turned into this huge thing,” she said. “It’s nice to finally be recognized.
The nine winners were identified and chosen by members of the Black Prosperity Initiative. The other five winners are:
Devine Carama is a socially conscious hip-hop artist, educator, community activist, and motivational youth speaker. He is director of the nonprofit youth organization Believing In Forever, Inc. He also runs an annual coat drive to help kids stay warm in winter.
Khari Gardner, a University of Kentucky student, founded the Movement for Black Lives at UK to focus on social, racial, and economic justice in the UK community and across Kentucky.
Stephen T. Overstreet founded Our Park in 2013 to transform Douglass Park from a dangerous space into a park for children and the community. As a member of the City Council’s 100-year Centennial Commission for Douglass Park, Mr. Overstreet organized more than 100 events in and for the park.
Ashley C. Smith and Trevor Claiborn, Sr. co-founded Black Soil: Our Better Nature in 2017 to help reconnect Black Kentuckians to their heritage in agriculture. Black Soil fosters the next generation of Kentucky Black farmers and chefs.
Tanya Torp is a diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility consultant who has worked as a facilitator at numerous organizations providing workshops to improve Black lives. She is co- founder of Not The Only One In the Room, a space for women of color in the community, and is co-founder of BIPOC womyms writing group.
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Rev. L. Clark Williams has been involved in social justice and voter engagement work in Lexington, Central Kentucky and throughout the state since 2010. He founded Operation Turnout and The People’s Campaign to inform and engage those who care about affordable healthcare, public education, and social and economic justice.
On Monday, the city will conduct a very pared-down celebration for Martin Luther King Jr., thanks to COVID-19. But Higgins-Hord said these awards are appropriate to his legacy.
“His principles are indelibly etched in our minds,” she said. “We are owning not just our unsung heroes but our issues and problems and collectively we are being part of the solution for who we are and how we fit into this community. We are his vision ... these awardees and Dr. Martin Luther King remind us that greatness is available to anyone who wants to access it.”
This story was originally published January 15, 2021 at 9:21 AM.
