Eric Edi, president of the Coalition of African and Caribbean Communities, and Youma Ba, owner of the Senegalese restaurant, Kilimandjaro, talk with students.
Parfait Kouacou
If students could polish their conversational French skills, learn about West African culture, explore racial justice issues from diverse viewpoints, sample plantains and forge friendships with University City neighbors in one class, would they sign up?
Associate Teaching Professor Parfait Kouacou bet they would. The gamble not only paid off, it illustrated how community-based learning can build bridges between the University and a vibrant immigrant community in West Philadelphia.
A native of Côte d’Ivoire, Kouacou wanted to design a course to help Drexel students strengthen their French language skills while interacting with members of the nearby Francophone African community. Doing so would help the Department of Global Studies and Modern Languages in the College of Arts and Sciences fulfill its ambition of heightening students’ awareness of world issues and local concerns. It would also amplify community-based learning opportunities that Drexel’s Lindy Center for Civic Engagement promotes.
Global issues, local lens.
Kouacou collaborated with Eric Edi, the president and COO of the Coalition of African and Caribbean Communities, to develop the course, “West Africa to West Philadelphia,” which allowed students to learn and speak alongside members of West Philadelphia’s African immigrant community. Guest lecturers, including alumni of the Mandela Washington Fellowship program with which Drexel is affiliated, enlivened the discussions. The class included a shared meal at Kilimandjaro, a Senegalese restaurant on Baltimore Avenue. Initially, Kouacou envisioned offering the course every two years.
But after the first cohort of 10 Dragons and 10 community members enrolled in spring 2021, Kouacou taught it again in the fall of 2022.
I wanted to introduce Drexel students to the world of the African immigrant community.
— Parfait Kouacou
“It was amazing to relate class topics to everyone’s lived experiences,” says Maéva Kadjo ’24, a management information systems and business analytics major and real estate management and development minor. “It was also an opportunity for the students and community members to share their cultures with each other.”
As both an educator and a collaborator, Kouacou found the course rewarding.
“In a community-engaged course, students are active learners, not just recipients of knowledge,” he says. “Student learning takes place in some form beyond the traditional classroom format, through dialogue with guest participants, the community and other experiential learning.”