Cover Image: Going Global with Barbara high school students at Sciences Po
April 2023
© Wells International Foundation

Entrée to Black Paris has provided walking tours and activities to study abroad groups since we opened our doors under the name Discover Paris! in 1999. We have always believed in the power of travel to broaden minds and hearts and building well-rounded, open-minded, critically-thinking youth. 

We have seen firsthand how travel, especially travel abroad, provides opportunities for students to look openly and honestly at themselves, their homeland and their culture by experiencing different cultures and how those cultures view them.

Winston Salem State University students on
Black Images in European Art at the Louvre tour (2014)
© Discover Paris!

In Autumn 2020, we entered into an official collaboration with the Wells International Foundation (WIF) on the Entrée to Black Paris (ETBP) Cultural Awareness initiative with the mission to create opportunities for people of all nationalities, races, and creeds to learn about the enormous contribution that Africans and persons of African descent have made to French, and especially Parisian, culture.

We believe this program will increase awareness, understanding, and appreciation of black cultures, which, in turn, will positively influence and impact the path to social justice.

A powerful example of this is the work that ETBP Cultural Awareness has done to support the International Youth Leadership Program (IYLP) hosted by Going Global with Barbara, an organization that educates underserved African American youth about travel abroad and encourages these youth to consider enrolling in college abroad.

Through ETBP Cultural Awareness, WIF has designed campus visits and other customized activities for three IYLP excursions thus far and Entree to Black Paris contributed live walking tours and activities to these programs.  

Going Global with Barbara students at American Business School in Paris
April 2023
© Wells International Foundation

The next IYLP excursion to Paris is scheduled for November 2023.

Another aspect of ETBP Cultural Awareness' work is social media outreach to expose youth to the enormous influence that Black culture wields in Paris.  Content for our African Diaspora Cultural Awareness in Paris – aka ADCI Paris – Instagram page and Facebook group is curated by WIF interns and volunteers who are study abroad students or recent graduates of Paris institutes of higher learning.

ADCI logo
(designed by WIF Intern Marteena Mendelssohn)

During the 2022-2023 academic year, American University of Paris student Marteena Mendelssohn and Parsons Paris student Anisa Williams thoughtfully and creatively provided content in the fall and spring semesters, respectively. Both served as WIF interns during this time.

As of September 2023, Aniya Hamilton, a recent graduate of Sciences Po, has taken up the mantle and is volunteering to curate ADCI Paris content.

WIF Volunteer Aniya Hamilton
Image courtesy of Aniya Hamilton

If you know of youth or youth organizations that would benefit from learning about ETBP Cultural Awareness, please share this blog post with them or write to Entrée to Black Paris to make an introduction!