Meeting during their time as students at the
University of Southern California, Kameni Ngahdeu and Kwabena Osei-Larbi were mission driven from the start of their friendship and found comfort in their shared cultural backgrounds. Hailing from West Africa, Ngahdeu was raised in Cameroon and Osei-Larbi was born in Ghana but raised in Nigeria and lived in Syria before traveling to the United States to attend college on the West Coast. While they shared cultural elements of which they were proud, the pair were also connected through the negativity they experienced regarding their heritage.
“We both had similar experiences growing up,” Osei-Larbi said. “At times we were made to feel like we weren’t meant to be proud of our African heritage or backgrounds or even the color of our skin.”