UJAMAA SHULE believes in Pan-Afrikanism and Nationalism, and in the teachings and doctrines of the Honorable Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, and Kwamé Nkrumah.
UJAMAA SHULE practices the basic value system of Afrikan people as outlined by Dr. Maulana Karenga in the NGUZO SABA:
UMOJA-Unity: To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race.
KUJICHAGULIA-Self-Determination: To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves, instead of being defined, named created for and spoken for by others.
UJIMA-Collective Work and Responsibility: To build and maintain our community together, and making our Sister’s and Brother’s problems our problems, and to solve them together.
UJAMAA-Cooperative Economics: To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together.
NIA-Purpose: To make the collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
KUUMBA-Creativity: do always as much as we can in the way we can, in the way we can in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
IMANI-Faith: To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.
THEORY OF UJAMAA SHULE
The basic concept of UJAMAA (Co-Operative Economics and Family Hood) originally evolved out a critical need to seriously analyze the then existing educational program (of mis-educating) within the D.C. Public School System. In a very realistic and positive fashion, there was a need to establish and Independent Afrikan Institution, which would, in fact, address the needs and aspirations of young Afrikan children suffering within the confines of a decaying urban environment. The kind of education that was being taught in the public schools was of such a poor quality that it, in effect, perpetuated a crippling system of mis-education and failure for our children: therefore, it became absolutely necessary to pursue a definite course of action that would, in actuality introduce a program that placed specific emphasis on the cultural as well as the academic aspects of Afrikan education.
The schools, in effect, were committing educational and cultural genocide against the youth of our communities. Understanding that we as black people here in America are all essentially of Afrikan descent, Ujamaa introduced many facets of Afrikan culture that were actually put into practice this we feel is a valid and wholesome approach to properly educate and hopefully reshape the minds of our young Afrikan children.
