Did you know that Rosa Parks was not the first black woman to refuse to give up her seat on a bus in the United States? Claudette Colvin, a 15-year-old girl, was nine months ahead of him. These are the types of anecdotes that Vanessa Fataccy makes known with her game Jamii. Board game at the crossroads of Trivial Pursuit and the game of the goose, the Jamii highlights Afro cultures through a question-and-answer game. The game’s design earned Vanessa Fataccy, better known by the pseudonym
Evingel, to win the title of Créatrice d’Avenir Seine-Saint-Denis and the Quartier trophy,
Ile-de-France Initiative competition dedicated to female entrepreneurship.
With her game, she wanted to develop a concept allowing players to come together in one Jamii, community, based on “what we have in common”. It must be said that Vanessa Fataccy is imbued with different cultures. His parents are natives of Martinique, Guadeloupe and Guyana. She was born in Belgium, grew up in France, lived in the United States, before returning to settle in Seine-Saint-Denis.
“Let’s play together to get to know each other better”
the Jamii is “a playground where you learn what is not yet in class”, explains its creator. The entrepreneur left school at 16 feeling that her teachers did not know how to answer her questions. When her daughter enters college twenty-five years later, she realizes that the content of textbooks has not changed. “There is no mention of the history of Afro-descendants, or otherwise in a negative way through colonization and triangular trade. Vanessa Fataccy laments this way of teaching history, but above all, the disinterest that her daughter displays for her own culture.
It is while thinking of a playful way to transmit his story to his teenager that the idea of the game comes to him. “Books, reading, it’s very lonely. I was looking for a way to learn who reread us. I couldn’t find it so I did. The mother of the family launches the project and makes it known “everywhere you do not expect it”, in hairdressing salons, cereal bars, etc. The concept is well received, the entrepreneur is even thanked by mothers of mixed families who do not know how to explain their origins to their children. His answer is simple: “Let’s play together to get to know each other better. “
A great ambition for the future
After leaving school, Vanessa Fataccy did not stop learning by visiting museums, taking trips and watching documentaries. “We value learning in books but not in life. Just because you haven’t learned something from a book doesn’t mean it’s not interesting. “The entrepreneur plans to” work hand in hand “with the National Education of different countries on these issues. Several schools have already made use of it in classes to raise awareness of learning outside of textbooks. A high school in Côte d’Ivoire also contacted her with a view to developing its program.
For now, she is focusing on the development of the game in France. The codes of the company, like those of the school, slow down it. Vanessa Fataccy therefore continues to go it alone. For the first time, she plans to work with others because her project “really has potential. It’s time to be more professional and to work less artistically. »From January 2022, she will be accompanied by professionals in the Station F, a Parisian start-up campus, to bring its digital game to life.