Dowoti Désir

Dowoti Désir is the Founder and President of the DDPA Watch Group, an international human rights coalition working on democratic, cultural and educational issues related to the Durban Declaration & Programme of Action (DDPA). In 2010, she founded the OGUN Taskforce for , an interfaith, cultural diplomacy and policy-oriented forum addressing the changing dynamics in Haiti and its Diaspora. An Advisor to UNESCO on projects related to the global African community, Ms. Désir is a journalist and former Associate Publisher of The AFRIcan Magazine and a host and co-producer of AfrobeatRadio, WBAI 99.5 FM in the United States.

A specialist in public art, Ms. Désir has informally advised the U.N. Permanent Memorial Committee to Honor the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Trade on its on-going international design competition. She has served as a Federal Advisor and specialist consultant to the African Burial Ground of since 1992. She was contracted by the International Labour Organization, World Culture Open and Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) to interface on national initiatives led by the governments of Zambia, and Uganda respectively towards alleviating poverty through cultural enterprise.

She served as the first Executive Director of The Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial, Educational and Cultural Center (‘06-’09) and worked as an Adjunct Professor in the Africana Studies Department of Brooklyn College, City University of New York. For over 25 years she has worked in the arts community movement in the U.S. as the Director of Community Arts Initiatives of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council [LMCC]. Ms. Désir managed the largest grant program administered by the State of New York, the Fund for Creative Communities. At LMCC she also conceived and managed the innovative cultural assessment project, Mapping New Terrain: Communities in Transition, which analyzed the impact of globalization in the Harlem’s various communities.

A Manbo Asogwe in Haitian Vodou, she is both a priest and a scholar who has lectured extensively on Haitian Vodou and the spiritual traditions of the Afro-Atlantic at a variety of institutions throughout the United States including the Museum of the African Diaspora (San Francisco; Harvard University School of Divination; Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University; and the Institute for the Advancement of Puerto Rican Studies in Carolina, Puerto Rico.

Her writings on the orisa-based cultures can be found in the Wabash Center’s “Teaching Theology and Religion,” and Vanderbilt University’s “Afro-Hispanic Review,” among others. Dowoti Désir is a graduate of Barnard College, Columbia University and has a Masters’ degree from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.