EMERGENT AFRICAN IMMIGRANT PHILANTHROPY IN NEW YORK CITY

Philanthropy takes many forms among African immigrant communities. It exists in the form of mutual aid for friends, extended family, lineage, and fictive kin. This last category includes, but is not limited to, those from an individual’s ethnic group, or even from their country of origin. Philanthropy is also to be found in the form of kindness and generosity toward strangers. Above all, elements of philanthropy are to be found in the corporatization of community-based efforts to develop the human and material resources among many African ethnic groups. Many studies of the process of urbanization in Africa indicate the ubiquity of formation of hometown organizations that perform social functions including philanthropy among newly urbanized Africans. These organizations assist urbanized home folk from the villages and the towns of origin from which these urbanized groups originally emerged in various respects. The assistance offered include giving material and moral support in times of significant social celebration and mourning, for education as well as for home construction, construction of infrastructure for the home community, and for various other community-based development efforts. The efforts of African immigrants in the United States and elsewhere closely follow the patterns described above. The patterns are so ubiquitous as to warrant a claim of their emergence from a philosophical orientation toward philanthropy in African society.