Napela Community Festival with the Park Hill Community Market
160 to 180 Park Hill Ave, Staten Island
FREE and open to all!

Join us at the 5th Annual Napela Community Festival with the Park Hill Community Market on Saturday, Sept 8th from 2-6pm. Shop for unique cultural goods including clothes, fabrics, specialty produce, and prepared food and drinks. The afternoon will feature traditional folk arts, dance, and activities, including great music from Yan. Ly, Mitch, and Blamoh & The Traditional Dancers! The annual Miss Napela Princess will also be announced!

Napela Inc, a non-profit organization on Staten Island’s North Shore, is comprised of West African and other immigrant and refugee women who are committed to English language aptitude, improving knowledge around U.S. citizenship, and entrepreneurship. Several participants connect all of these pieces together on summer afternoons at Park Hill Community Market, where they set up vendor stalls and create an open-air cultural marketplace in a former parking lot at Park Hill Apartments, a HUD Section 8 development. The market preserves and passes on cultures, building community cohesion in the process. According to Adama Fassah, founder of Napela and organizer of Park Hill Community Market, “We encourage our community to engage, identify, and share traditions so that our children might understand the rich cultural history that they come from.” In 2017, Napela added a children’s after school program to their adult education services.

Can’t make the festival?

Consider attending Napela’s First Annual Fundraising Dinner or donating to Napela to help them purchase supplies, pay rent, secure teachers, and facilitate arts and cultural programming for the coming year.

Napela Community Festival 2018 with the Park Hill Community Market is organized by Napela Inc and co-sponsored by Citizens Committee for New York City and the Napela board. The market and festival are also fortunate to partner with Staten Island Arts and Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts NY’s (NOCD-NY) Creative Transformations: Arts, Culture and Public Housing Communities program.