MISSION AND VISION OF TAYITU ENTERTAINMENT CENTER 

Tayitu Cultural and Educational Center is established with the ultimate purpose to meet the cultural, social and artistic needs of the Ethiopian Community in North America, especially in the Washington Metropolitan area. In accomplishing this mission, the Center primarily focuses on producing and presenting theatres, dramas, literary works to the public while pursuing the lofty goal of supporting the youth in their educational endeavor through tutoring and educational programs. The center has run a monthly poetry club for sixteen consecutive years that brings together those interested in Ethiopian literature and poetry, folklore and oral traditions. Knowing the importance of providing such services as educating children, counseling the young, training the jobless with various useful skills, and providing a better opportunity for the elderly in spending a productive day, the center is posing itself to run social programs that cater to the needs of a diversified clientele. TEC’s vision is, therefore, to see the Ethiopian community in Diaspora revitalize itself with a dynamic and positively tuned cultural center serving as its hub. The dream of the management is nothing less than running successful programs like Jewish Cultural Centers, Irish Cultural Centers, Indian Cultural Centers and other similar cultural hubs which operate across the nation.  By following the footstep of other successful cultural centers, TEC will build the Ethiopian Cultural Center by customizing the success stories of others to fit the needs and idiosyncrasies of the Ethiopian community. When TEC runs its multipurpose cultural center in the Washington Metropolitan area, it is expected to be a model to regenerate a community that is yet to have only one cultural center in the Washington Metropolitan area, even though the number of immigrants in the target population is more than in the tens of thousands at least for the last two decades.

Theatre

Tayitu Cultural Center established a strategic partnership with another volunteer-run organization, Tutoring and Mentoring Program (TMP), a program that started in 2002 to provide free academic tutoring and youth mentoring services in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Renamed Tayitu Cultural and Educational Center (TCEC), TCEC benefits from the synergistic alliance and combined institutional strength of these two veteran community organizations to become an even more valuable and effective service provider to the community.