Makayla

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Yasmine

🎥 Djeli Team - Who Are We?

The Djeli Team is a group of youth storytellers, memory keepers, documentarians, and cultural workers within Youth Restorative Justice (YRJ). Our role is to capture, preserve, and share the stories of our communities through interviews, photography, videography, writing, and digital storytelling. Through projects like The Story of Us – Our Journey, we document not only what happens in YRJ spaces, but also the voices, wisdom, struggles, healing, and transformation of the people within them.

The word “Djeli” (sometimes spelled Jeli or connected to the word Griot) comes from West African traditions, particularly among the Mandé peoples of countries such as Mali, Guinea, Senegal, and The Gambia. Traditionally, Djelis were historians, musicians, poets, storytellers, advisors, and keepers of community memory. They carried history through oral storytelling, song, rhythm, and spoken word, ensuring that the stories, values, and lessons of the people were never forgotten.

Inspired by this tradition, the Djeli Team understands storytelling as more than content creation — it is an act of responsibility, care, preservation, and community-building. We believe stories have the power to heal, teach, connect, and transform. As youth Djelis, we work to honor the humanity of those whose stories we tell while imagining and helping create a more just, compassionate, and beautiful world than the one we inherited.

If we do not tell our stories, someone else will tell them for us.

Jaynaliz

Ray

Emily