Each One Teach Ten

AYA’sFamily Lore Project

2026–2027

Four journeys. Eight challenges in each. One family story, gathered from the elders, healed, and given back with dignity.

Inspiration

A Djeli and a Djelimuso smiling beside a kora

A Djeli and a Djelimuso with the kora, the 21-string harp-lute of Mande memory

FLP JOURNEY GUIDES

Become your family’s Djeli

Among the Mande peoples of West Africa, the Djeli keeps and performs the memory of a family and a people: its lines, its deeds, its songs, its lessons. In the Family Lore Project, Black students accept the Djeli’s responsibilities for their own families, as Djeli-in-Training.

Students interview parents, grandparents, and elders. They set family lives inside the larger Black story, listen for how the family has healed itself, learn to see through broken stories, and give it all back to the family at a Return. Each journey goes deeper, two journeys a year for two years.

“We’re not a broken people. We have broken stories.”

The creed of the AYA Storyologist

Listen · Investigate · Preserve · Interpret · Heal · Perform · Educate · Return

Eight challenges in every journey

Each journey moves through the same eight challenges, going deeper every time.

  1. IAccept the MissionListenMeet the Djeli and commit to your family.
  2. IIGain Family TrustListenEarn the trust that opens a family’s memory.
  3. IIIGather the LoreInvestigate · PreserveInterview your elders and keep what they give.
  4. IVGo DeeperInvestigate · InterpretSet your family’s life inside the larger Black story.
  5. VHeal Broken StoriesHealFind how your family healed, and name what wounds us.
  6. VIShape & PerformPerformGive your family’s story a voice.
  7. VIITeach the FamilyEducateTurn the lore into a game the whole family plays.
  8. VIIIThe ReturnReturnGive the story back, with dignity.
Children sitting in a circle, facing each other with their feet together

The Story Circle

The Story Circle is rooted in the African cultural practice of call and response. One voice calls, and the community answers, so no one speaks alone and every story is received.

Here, you start by answering the call.

Before you share a story of your own, you respond to two others with four moves:

  • Name itGive the story a name.
  • Take itSay what it taught you.
  • Ask itAsk the teller a question.
  • Link itConnect it to your own family.

Skill Building Blocks

Every challenge is built from four 30-minute Skill Building Blocks, about two hours a week.

  1. How-To StudyLearn the skill, watch the video, check yourself.
  2. Family ResearchInterview, gather, plan, and build with your family.
  3. Personal ReflectionWrite what you learned and what you felt.
  4. DemonstrationAnswer the call, then share your telling in the Story Circle.

Begin with family

Like Araminta, every Djeli-in-Training begins at home.

Start Journey 1: Araminta Continue to Journey 2: Assata Shakur