Chaka Mahone, DAWA (Diversity Awareness and Wellness in Action)

Chaka Mahone, Founder/Creative Director, DAWA

 About the Program: 

Community is Our Greatest Technology

Community and collaboration as infrastructure for the future we want to see. Award-winning hip hop artist, Jonathan 'Chaka' Mahone has built an innovative, culture-forward, non-profit organization in the 'Live Music Capital' that has distributed over $500,000 in 6 years.

About the Speaker:

Jonathan 'Chaka' Mahone is a visionary storyteller who believes in the power of art, and the importance of the artist as a community catalyst for social and cultural change, economic development, healing, planning, and collective conversation. As a performing artist and musician, he has traveled the world as one-half of the award-winning hip hop duo, Riders Against the Storm (RAS). As a civic leader, Mahone became the first African-American Chair of Austin's Music Commission in 2021. In 2019, he founded DAWA (Diversity Awareness and Wellness in Action) to provide a safety net for People of Color that are experiencing short term life crisis.

More specifically, those who are givers: musicians, artists, social workers, teachers, healing practitioners, and service industry workers. Through its mission of ‘giving to the givers,’ and its vision of centering community and culture to drive social impact, DAWA has directly invested over a half million dollars in this group over the last 6 years.

Agenda: