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Spotlight New Jersey: TJA Distributors 

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News 12 Staff

510spotlightnj2_2025-05-10-12-43-36

Doctor Danette Green and Krishna Garlick, jurist's doctor, are here in studio with me for Spotlight New Jersey. They are co-founders of the Guided Collaboration Collective. You all took a trip to Jamaica. What was that like? So we've done it for the last 4 years and although we take Rutgers students and that's amazing because we're able to have um the experience of exposing our young. People to uh intergenerational experiences and cultural immersions we also take uh community members who want to attend as well so my mom goes every year. Danette's mom has gone with us to Jamaica as well, um, her dad um so other family members so it's really great to get to see that interaction between the young people and their elders, um, which also adds another dynamic to the trip. Uh, but while we're there we make sure that we balance mission work with, um, cultural experience so they're able to participate. We have a school that we work with there, um, where we're able to, um, give the children book bags, school supplies, uh, we've, we are adopting a library this year where we're gonna rehab their library. Yeah, we're really excited about that. We are. So I mean we we are always looking for donations to be able to help to support that because there's construction that has to be done at the library as well as resources, computers, books, um smart TVs, etc. things that they need, um, so that's one of our big initiatives for this year um but while we're there we also um leave them with school books, uh, we leave them with books that they can read and add to their own. Um, you know, um, classrooms, uh, we work with the Ministry of Health there, so we do, uh, two community events in two different neighborhoods where, um, we make sure that people get flu shots and COVID vaccines and, um, see a dentist and they get haircuts and um they get a lunch that day, they get a host of donations that we bring from here from individuals and businesses that support us here we take donations there. Um, soccer balls, just so many amazing toys, we take diapers, diapers. I was the, the, the, the one of the projects that we work on is an orphanage and it's the mustard seed program which is at University of Technology, and so we bring diapers down and we bring um motor. toys for them um to uh play with while they're there in the pool and things like that that they need to be able to engage the youth in their programs um yeah we sent 15 barrels this last time when we went to Jamaica in advance 15 barrels of donations so it's very exciting.

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512SPOITLIGHTNJTWO_2025-05-12-11-52-53

This month the Guided Collaboration Collective is taking a group from New Jersey to Ghana. Doctor Danette Green and Krishna Garlic, juris's doctor, are the co-founders. We're going to Ghana in, uh, May 23rd to June 3rd, and, uh, the reason we chose Ghana is because we actually started in Jamaica and we began partnering with Rutgers University. uh, Doctor Eli Marsalis is our partner there and he's with Africana Studies at Rutgers Camden. And so once we did Jamaica several times, um, I guess they had a good time with us uh they love our energy uh because we do a lot we do you know the work, but we also have fun and we, we show them and I was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica, so I still have a lot of family there on the ground doing that work and then, uh, Doctor Marcellus came back and he said, you know, do you guys have connections anywhere else? and I said well I have connections in Ghana, right? And so we have people on the ground in Ghana. Uh, I've been to Ghana several times, 2 times prior to be exact, and so I have, you know, a few connections there and then I, you know, Krishna and I agreed that we're gonna do that and so we just decided to go to Ghana. That's the motherland, that's, you know, where our ancestors were and we're going to make sure that they have the ability to do that. Do it Krishna, what sites do you want people to see in Ghana? So we're going to take our uh we're we're taking them on a journey, right? So we arrive on the 24th and we'll be in the mountains in Acropong so we're going to make sure that our volunteers and our students are in Acropong seeing the, uh, being in a village with the actual village families and we're gonna be going to a school there and doing those things and reading to children. Uh, literacy is a part of everything that we do so we'll be doing that on the first day. Then we'll be going to the safari on the next. Day, which is a Sunday, we're gonna go to a local, uh, Presbyterian church so that we can have that experience as well. Uh, fast forward we'll go to the Cape Coast Castle, which is the point of the point of no return. Uh, we'll do that. We'll do a naming ceremony where everyone based on their birthday and their uh lineage and, uh, their family, uh, they'll get their Ghanaian name and we wear white and we'll have a name and ceremony and. Um, it's a festive event and then we'll the following day we'll go to the African slave Walk, um, and that's their experience there and, uh, they'll have that experience and then we'll go back to Accra, which is the city where we'll visit over those days, uh, the Kwame Nkrumah statue and mausoleum and then we'll visit an orphanage yeah, we'll go to a few other museums um we we'll go to an orphanage there and a clinic.

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511spotlightnj4_2025-05-11-08-39-34

We are talking about the guided collaboration collective Doctor Donnette Green and Krishna Garlick, jurist's doctor, are my guests. You have an event called Pancakes and Pajamas. Yes, I title. Well, so it's crazy. So, um, Pancakes and Pajamas, uh, I started that in 2016 in my previous career. um, there was a reading festival, uh, in the, uh. Founder of the Reading Festival, a good mentor of mine, Denise, started reading is Knowledge. Knowledge is power and so um when I came to learn about the event, I've watched it for years and I always wanted to emulate that event. Um, Najibe Kaplan was working at uh Newark Board of Education and um and she was the community partnership manager and so I said to her let's do this event and so we're like, you know, it's done in this way you read and so on and so forth and I was like, well what would you feed the people we were like, oh well you know we'll feed them pancakes and so and I was like well what about if they come in their pajamas and so and we're like, well what we we're like pancakes and pajamas, right? And so it was done for many years, probably 20 years um now in Irvington but then when we brought it to the historical Newark Public Library um it got really big, um, attention just based on the name Pancakes and pajamas and so a part of what we do there is bring community partners to read to the. Children, um, and it's encouraging literacy, uh, the emotional well-being of different individuals you'll see, you'll see, uh, councilman, the Pre Kelly, uh, First Lady Linda Baraka has been one of our readers, um, First Lady of Newark Linda Baraka, and so we want people to be able to engage and read with their children and understand that's the whole pajama thing, right? You read to your children at night that's building empathy, that's building understanding, it's building visual understanding and uh well-being within the. Themselves everyone has to sign up for a library card when they come and we partner with Newark Board of Education Office of Early Childhood so it's improving and increasing their early childhood literacy programs that they do there and just making sure that the well-being of individuals and parents, parents are able to understand their children a little bit more, giving them the creative perspective of reading uh it was funny we had a book one time when we went to Jamaica and there were no pictures we were like what are we gonna do with this book and the children. We're very creative and that's what we want. We want parents to be able to give their children even if you can't read like my sister uses the sight words and makes my nephew read the sight words but for pancakes and pajamas it doesn't matter what the child's reading level is if they can look at it and be just you know think about um their imagination is growing at that age and their emotional well-being is growing while they're learning how to read and building that connection and relationship with their parents.

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511spotlightnj5_2025-05-11-09-43-16

You are looking at the logo for guided collaboration Collective. The co-founders are here in studio. Doctor Danette Green and Krishna Garlick, jurist doctor. Ladies, I'm having a great time talking with you. Yes, yes, let's talk about your partnerships and collaborations. Yes, so our organization, this organization started out of partnership, right? We had two separate organizations. I talked a little bit about that in the beginning, um, collaboration over competition and distinctly. um, so that was kind of the foundation and we've always believed that it's really important for women to come together and work together so we would host these women's events that would bring women together to have conversations about how to support each other in business, um, and through that we were able to bring in a number of different partners. Obviously we've talked to you about Rutgers University, um, Doctor Eli, and he is a just invaluable partner in the work that we do um we also have. Um, my sister who has New World 664, she has a consulting firm and she is great with us with providing workshops for free to our students in Jamaica and abroad, um, as well as here on the ground, as well as donations of books and resources that we need for events, um, we have, um, Lorna, uh, Golden Cross, um restaurant which is in Plainfield, Union and. Ms. Lorna Lorna Romans, she donates food for us at all of our fundraisers, um, every year for the last 4 years. She is of Jamaican descent and going with us this year to Ghana, so we're very, very excited about her partnership. Um, we just could not do this without all of them. We have had a host of churches and small businesses, um, who have donated, um, soccer balls, one community, one family, which is another very. Small community event I think that really resonates with us that that's who like one community, one family, right? That's who we are as a people, as one community, one family and they have been very helpful as well. Definite WHP Global um they are uh they brought lotto, so a lot of the soccer items that we were able to bring soccer clothes, soccer cleats, soccer sandals, um, soccer field goals for us uh for the children we were able to bring down, so they're definitely um. Great partner as well. Buffalo Soldiers, the motorcycle Club, the Buffalo Soldiers of New Jersey, um, North Jersey and Buffalo Soldiers of South Florida. They both provide donations for us, um, Pan-African, uh, my dad, so my dad's group, Pan-African Association of Kingston, John's Lane, uh, we were doing this for years without them, and they were like, we want to be a part of it. Like how dare you go back to Jamaica and you don't go where you used to be on a pillow, so Pan-African Association.

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511spotlightnj6_2025-05-11-12-20-35

The co-founders of Guided Collaboration Collective, Doctor Danette Green and Krishna Garlick, jurist doctor, are here. Let's talk about your future goals for this group. All right, so I think we would have to start by saying we obviously want to expand the number of cultural immersion trips that we're doing right? that we want to be able to bring more people to more diverse places for them to have amazing experiences with other similar souls around the country, right? And so around the world I'm sorry, um, and to be able. To have more impact, uh, impact on more children encouraging more children to read, um, really wanting to grow that piece, and so I think you know this year the first when we started it was Jamaica now it's Jamaica and Ghana. I think next year, you know, we're already put in Jamaica, Ghana and Barbados so um yeah so I think we just want to continue to see that grow. Um, and then also, uh, we have, uh, a woman that we met and um she has a group, so a lot of the work that we do, um, especially at Distinctly guided is talking about emotional intelligence and having people understand the civility behind becoming more emotionally intelligent in themselves. So what does it look like to be self-aware? What does it look like to be uh to be motivated? What does it look like to regulate who you are and so Krishna and I just did a series in South Africa uh Krishna went this Friday I went to Fridays ago being able to talk. To young people and educators about their emotional intelligence and how that can help propel them into the individuals that they want to become um when we think about that part of the work that we do you know uh we're genuine this is who we are, right? And so being who we are, we had to learn based on our journeys how to become more emotionally intelligent and then be able to do this work and understand the respect that we have for the countries that we work with um. And that's a big part of what we talk to our students about when we're going in different spaces. So, so I I do civic engagement. So similarly when we do these presentations, it's taking from what Doctor Doctor Green says around emotional intelligence and saying, OK, so how does that impact our interactions with others and our willingness to stand out boldly when we see something that we don't like that we wanna change, right? And being being um persistent enough and bold enough to be able to do that. I think countries just like South Africa I, I, I see us going to we really wanna go to Tanzania, so we worked on we met someone that um has some connections there, uh, Kenya, um definitely on our list um we just Philippines, we talked about the Philippines, uh, we just wanna be able to do this work globally um and impact social change in that way.

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Co-founder Krishna Garlic joined News 12’s Della Crews to discuss the group and its mission.

Spotlight New Jersey: Guided Collaboration Collective

Co-founder Krishna Garlic joined News 12’s Della Crews to discuss the group and its mission.

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