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Kayler Williams: a champion of international cultures and Africa

Special to USAfricaonline.com
USAfrica The Newspaper, Houston
NigeriaCentral.com
The Black Business Journal

For the 31st year, on April 20-21, 2002 and April 27-28, 2002 will see yet another multicultural extravaganza and presentation of world music in the fourth largest city in the U.S., Houston. Mid-April beckons the acclaimed Houston International Festival.

The festival has remained a professional and community enhancing task for Kayler Williams, Administrative Director and Community Relations Manager who was very active, too, in co-arranging key aspects of the 1999 Houston International Festival which featured the Capetown area "Zip-Zap Circus" of two dozen teenagers and youths. They performed amazing stunts and daredevil feats of acrobatics. From the other side of South Africa, "Moving Into Dance," a group of a dozen teen-to-30 aged dancers, will show that county's traditions.

Houston International Festival President is a multicultural professional and leader Dr. Jim Austin.

Williams, an African-American, began her current position in 1996. She told me recently that her first trip to South Africa was "an eye-opener and a major point in my life in reconnecting with a major part of my heritage. I enjoyed visiting and learning so much." While she saw both more- or less-fortunate people than her place of residency in Houston, her impression of the shared human spirit leads her to conclude, "We're all the children of God."

In a statement sent to USAfricaonline.com and USAfrica The Newspaper by Ms. Williams, the organizers note they "will again introduce internationally acclaimed artists from all over, highlighted on the World Music Stage in the African Zone at City Hall. Headliners creating a rhythmic blast will include South Africa's regal Mahotella Queens; sweet-voiced singer Oliver Mtukudzi of Zimbabwe and the Congolese drum and dance troupe Les Tambours de Brazza (and) Senegal's critically-acclaimed Cheikh Lo, Cuban pianist Omar Sosa mixing in jazz and hip-hop with Latin music and the American saxophonist David Murray with his Caribbean roots band Creole II. It's not only music because in the African Zone the festival will showcase the African Market "offering an endless display of handmade arts and crafts from throughout Africa."

The festival has utilized its leverage to benefit international exchange. For example, in 1999, Houston simultaneously hosted the international business summit with the Corporate Council on Africa, promoting international trade and exchange, helped set up the third biennial event to coincide with the Festival. As a result, many heads of state and ministers of trade were in Houston to give person-to-person guidelines and advice to Houston-area business leaders also had some time to see apsects of the festival.

They included several hundred dignataries, trade ministers, and heads-of-state from individual nations throughout Africa, as well as administrative groups such as ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States), SADC (Southern African Development Community), COMESA (Common Market for East and Southern Africa), West African Economic and Monetary Union, the African Development Bank, African Export-Import Bank, Farmhouse LDA, UNDP Africa, and UNIDA. From the United States, there was a long list of government officials headed by cabinet-level secretaries of Energy, Commerce, and Transportation, congressional leaders, and others from the Secretary of State's office relating to economic development, various energy-related CEO heads, etc.

The U.S. Trade and Development Agency (TDA) and the Corporate Council on Africa hosted 13 African ministers of petroleum and national petroleum company executives on a Petroleum Industry Orientation Visit to the U.S. April 24-May 5, 1999.

Ms. Williams traveled with other team members from Houston to the previous African National Summit held outside Washington, D.C. in 1997.

Without a doubt, it is through the dedicated long-term work of individuals like her that the world gets to interact through mutually beneficial, educational cultural exchanges. For those and other factors of her public service, Kayler will be honored alongside a few other professional and family-building women at the USAfrica 2002 Anniversary events in Houston, on May 17, 2002.

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