Nyenyekevu Diane Moss – Keynote Speaker, Saturday

N. Diane Moss is a long-time advocate for place-based community change. As such she chooses to live, work and organize primarily in Southeastern San Diego and Compton, California. Moss has more than thirty years of experience in community organizing and advocacy for social justice and health parity issues. Since 2008, she has been involved with work which centers on food equity. She is currently organizing the People’s Produce Project, an initiative of Project New Village, which uses food to re-energize and re-connect residents to their neighborhoods as an avenue for self reliance and community wellness.

Bilali Muya – Keynote Speaker, Sunday

Bilali Muya is a Somali Bantu man born in 1985 to a vulnerable minority peasant family in the lower Juba region of southern Somalia. When Somali rebels attacked his people, he was separated from his parents and forced to flee to Kenya with other Somali Bantus. After walking over 200 miles, they arrived in Dadaab Refugee Camp, Kenya in 1992. After living there for four years, he left for Nairobi, Kenya’s capital city to search for a better life. Bilali barely survived, living on the streets for two years, unable to communicate to anyone in his native language. In 1998 he left Nairobi to join other Somali Bantus relocated to Kakuma refugee camp. There, Muya began a new life, enrolling and excelling in a public school and in Islamic studies. In 2000 he started the Bilali School of Language, tutoring children and adults and getting paid to help them with their homework. In 2003 he was hired to interpret during the Somali Bantu resettlement process and in 2004, he and his wife flew to the United States to begin a new life yet again. Muya has won a number of awards for his work and has told his story to legislators in Sacramento and on television. He currently is a Board Member for the Somali Bantu Community of San Diego and works for the International Rescue Committee with the New Roots Community Farm. He and his wife have 4 children and live in City Heights.