Meet Marvin and Samantha Minott | Owners of Sankofayah

We had the good fortune of connecting with Marvin and Samantha Minott and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Marvin and Samantha, how does your business help the community?
Our motto is Return and Build, this is inspired by the Sankofa bird from Ghana. This mythical bird represents the idea of going back to your roots, and taking it with you as you go on your journey in life. We have chosen to use this same concept in our business by re-introducing cultural practices, norms, and proverbial sayings in the black community as an effort to reconnect one severed ties to a rich Ancient history.

Through the creation of the brands FAT RICH and Mansa Musa Money we have been able to provide cross generational education thereby fostering engaging and meaningful conversations about community development and group economics.

Through Sankofayah cares, we have been able to provide families with holiday dinners as well as clothe the underserved. Virtually, we have been able to create a network of likeminded individuals who take great pride in not only supporting but collaborating with other black owned businesses in efforts to continue circulating money in our Community. We intend to work on a broader scale in the future to make a global impact.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I, Marvin Minott am co-founder of Sankofayah. The idea of our brands stems from a medical school career driven mindset. As a student of medicine, I studied biochemical molecules specifically microscopic FAT and was able to discover something unique about their behavior and simultaneously noticed the huge separation of our communities and saw a missing piece that would connect us. The missing piece was returning to some ancient principles and further building upon those principles. Furthermore, I did not attain this level of success without the retention of these ancient principles used as a guideline throughout life. The journey has been filled with challenges that has enabled me to learn to overcome those challenges by remembering that life is about making it easier for others and self. I’ve learned along the way that we are here to make life easier for others and many different disciplines of study share the same function. I would like the world to know that Sankofayah produces brands not for self but for us all to remember our ancient Fat Rich history and we must make it easier for others on this journey whether it be monetarily, psyhcologically, & physically.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Let’s start off, we are Vegan-ish. Marvin has been Began for over a decade and I’ve been married to a vegan but I’m vegetarian/pescatarian.. so that makes me vegan-ish right?! Lol.

Being married to a Vegan means we are always looking for a good vegan restaurant with lots of varieties. With that being said, if a friend is visiting for the week we would have to first check out Wadada ATL. It is the first black-female owned health food market in the historical West End. The vibes, the energy…the food vendors that are there depending upon the day. There’s always something going on there. Plus you can get vegan shakes/smoothies/desserts. Did we say desserts?! For breakfast the next morning we would definitely check out soul vegetarian for their pancakes!

Loving it live is a raw food spot that has well known guest speakers come for events and live poetry. Desta is an ethiopian restaurant with nice outdoor ambiance. Needless to say we are foodies. The High Museum of Art is always a nice place to go, and on the first saturday or sunday of the month at certain times there is a free entry.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
We have to give a MAJOR shout out to Brittney from Speekbee LLC. We connected with Brittney on Instagram! One day we received a message saying how much she liked what we were doing and wanted to know how she could help. We were so grateful for her kind words but even more for her vision, she saw where we were going with Sankofayah. Since then Brittney has helped us provide signature gifts to those families we blessed with holiday dinners. She most recently helped us at our vending booth for Juneteenth ATL. Brittney has always remained genuine and we love that about her. This showed us that when you build something you don’t have to look far for your community. Your community will find you.

Website: Www.sankofayah.com

Instagram: Www.instagram.com/sankofayah_

Twitter: Www.twitter.com/sankofayah

Facebook: Www.facebook.com/sankofayahfatrich/

Youtube: https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCUWwd7F9namAs1w8cqUzDzw