Who is Valrie Kemp-Davis?
Valrie Kemp-Davis is a native of Tampa, Florida who makes her home in East Chicago, Indiana. She is the author of culturally conscious literature that celebrates Children of the Diaspora.
She believes in the traditions of the Griot and loves to record history and tell stories in a contemporary, clever, and relevant manner. Believing in the power of education, self-love, and self-knowledge, she has sought to cross the Middle Passage to join hearts and hands for a common purpose of reclamation of history, social justice, honor, love, and unity. She attended Warner University earning a Bachelor of Arts degree and attended graduate school at Clark Atlanta University. Her law enforcement career spans thirty years employment respectively with the Georgia and Illinois Department of Corrections.
Ms. Kemp-Davis is a Life Member and Silver Star of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. where she served for years for the advancement of education amongst students, economic empowerment, health and wellness and social and environmental justice and the advancement of people in her community. She has connected and served for years with those in the community as it relates to voter registration, canvassing, phone banking and getting into good trouble!
She is an avid volunteer in her community whether it's helping distribute food via her church food bank, teaching youth creative writing with The Jasmine Project Summer program, using her creative and ministering skills to volunteer at Lake County Juvenile Center and more.
Ms. Kemp-Davis has a global perspective, and her range of service has stretched as far as Nassau Bahamas where she serves Kingdor Parkinson Foundation as a liaison for Parkinson awareness and has co-emceed several annual fundraising gala balls. Her philosophical brand was developed under the Carradice Collection imprint where her slogans are “Collectively We Carry This and Embracing Cultures, Enriching Lives!”
She created The One Love Project where she crafted a participatory program for elementary age children to learn about culture. The One Love Project premise was one can celebrate and fuse with other cultures without appropriating through stereotyping and/or labeling. She engaged youth in the Northwest Indiana area and Chicago to heighten their awareness of a One Love mindset. These cultural exercises acutely signaled children of the importance to be tolerant, anti-bias and inclusive.
She also co-created A FiWi Culture project where she traveled to Jamaica to help resonate the message of self-love, cultural curated creative ways for children to express national pride and to reacquaint the children with their own culture as we emphasized nurturing their roots and walking in the knowledge of their great history! A FiWi Culture's goal was to promote and help children who oftentimes esteem other cultures from "Foreign" more highly than their own due to their life's circumstances and the perception that places like Canada, the UK and America are better. The children were encouraged to creatively express their intrinsic beauty of who they are and what their island country and culture offer the world.
To date this Ms. Kemp-Davis has authored four culturally based children's books, Carradice Christmas Chronicles, Jamaican Mi Seh Mi Abc's, Rainbow Cuddlings and Hopped on Pops. She also co- authored the Anthology Triumph Over Grief.