No, I wasn’t just typing random letters for the title of this post. Uzazi Pamoja means “Parenting Together” in Swahili. Uzazi Pamoja is a community-based program organized by Communities 4 Families, here in Winnipeg. The goal of the program is to help newcomers to Canada (many of them of African descent) assimilate to the community in terms of parenting ideas commonly practiced in Canadian culture. I was hired to design a logo and leader’s manual for the program.
For the logo, I took the approach of hands reaching out to each other, which visually also represent a Canadian maple leaf. The manual is full of program session ideas, recipes, children’s songs and activities, nutritional ideas and general information about behaviour and discipline. The styling throughout the document was kept clean and concise, with images of people and objects primarily being in silhouette so that the cultural background of the people could be open to interpretation. I found this project to be very fulfilling to work on, as it felt great to be working on something that will directly impact the quality of life of many new immigrants to Canada, as well I learned a lot of new ideas, songs and activities that I can implement into my family’s routines.