Vese Aghoghovbia, Author & Founder of Philly & Friends

In the stormy swell of 2020, dominated by Covid, economic gloom and deeply heartfelt pain around race and skin colour, there are still rays of hope.

Once such is Vese Aghoghoviba, the author of children’s book ‘Who Do I See in the Mirror’ and founder of Philly & Friends, a diverse range of children’s products, designed to instil self-love and confidence in little ones.

I met Vese in an Instagram conversation back in May. As many of us woke up to the realisation that we had far more work to do and searched in disbelief and sorrow to tell a better story, Vese, with her gentle strength, gave me gracious encouragement to get involved in the conversation.

Her book has since been selected by Hello! magazine as one of the best 15 children’s books on diversity. We caught up to talk about embracing your story, why representation is so important and the beauty and richness of the world we all need to celebrate.

Vese, I love brands with purpose and it feels like your business Philly and Friends has great purpose. Can you tell me a bit about that?

It's all about representation for children. It matters so much and we underestimate the value of it.

Say that you see a family of lawyers where the mum is a lawyer, the dad's a lawyer, the children are lawyers, the grandparents are lawyers. It happens because those people saw lawyers before them and people that they identified with and they looked up to them and thought, "Okay, I can be like them."

Now, if you don't see something like that before you, it's hard to imagine being something other than what you have seen. Sometimes the only way you can look up to something is if you've potentially been exposed to it in a book or a movie.

Wasn't it your daughter who first inspired you to write?

Yes, I really feel the influence that I have over my daughter because if you listen to your kids, they replicate what they see on TV, their toys and all these things.

People try to say that they're colourblind, but it's not possible. If you can see the colour yellow, you can see skin colour so children from a young age can already see that their skin and their hair is different from that of whoever is next to them. It doesn't even have to be Black or Asian. It can be blonde hair, red hair, dark hair. Children identify those differences.

If, when you are young, the only version of Black skin that you see is people who are struggling, then that's all you begin to imagine for yourself. And if the people who are represented positively in the books and media and everywhere are never like you, as a Black child you begin to think this sort of good life is reserved just for a white kid. Those are the sorts of little, subtle things that you begin to understand.

So the passion behind Philly & Friends is really to give representation to the underrepresented?

Obviously, I'm Black so that's where my main focus is and when I started, it was literally just a gift for my daughter because I just felt like I don't see as much representation as I would love her to have growing up here in the UK.

But the whole message about diversifying your home is very important because we all need to show our children a diverse range of people doing good things and talk about them positively. These are all human beings, just with different skin but colour makes the world so beautiful.

Has the impact of your book taken you by surprise?

The impact it has had, I never expected it. That's what keeps me going. It's so funny because people have actually opened my eyes to the importance of what I'm trying to do. I don't think I understood the gravity of it and for a very long time I refused to call myself an author because I thought I'd just written a children's book. I've realised now that what I did is actually a big deal.

Yes, your book makes me feel really hopeful. You're offering a new perspective on how we could raise our children to see colour and race positively and that is a hope-giving thing to me. Have there been things in your life as you grew up that have inspired you and your writing?

For a long time I've been passionate about confidence and instilling confidence in children. I was born on the 29th of February and when I was much younger I used to cry about it so much because my birthday would only really come once in four years. My mum had to sit me down and keep instilling in me that I was still special because being born on that date affected my sense of identity.

Even now when it comes to a year that I don't have a birthday, I find myself feeling unstable around that time. I feel like I don't stand anywhere. A lot of people had opinions about my birthday too and my mum did such a fantastic job but it would still eat at my confidence. I think I realised that representation was important because I wasn't represented on the calendar and in a year when my birthday did actually come I would go overboard to try and make up for things.

You can actually see similarities in the sense that when Black people experienced Black Panther for example, we went overboard because we felt finally we were represented. Finally we had a Black superhero.

Vese, talking of that, aren't you writing another book about remarkable African women?

Yes, I feel that the narrative of black people, particularly Africans, is very, very poverty stricken but Africans have done, and are doing, great and fantastic things.

I really like Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti. She's like the mother of Nigeria. She fought so hard for women's rights and really challenged male dominance back in the 60's. She was a great stronghold and stood by her children at the same time.

Back then it was completely remarkable but there are so many others too. We need to take the time out to teach our children about all these other cultures and appreciate them.

This year conversations around ‘black lives matter’ have come to the fore and in the creative community some have tried to give support by buying from more Black-owned businesses. What other things can we do?

Buying is fantastic but I also think that speaking up and speaking out is so important. One of the things I see about the feminist movement is that it has grown so much because a lot of men have come to support it.

So, whoever you are, if you see or hear something dodgy, you need to address it because being Black is not a bad thing, it's not a topic that you avoid. It's who I am. If you see a child being treated negatively, regardless of who they are, you need to highlight it. You need to go over and acknowledge and ask if they're okay.

If each and every one of us starts to show some care and concern and speak out, slowly this kind of behaviour changes things but really, change starts from the home. If children are able to see diversity and see it in a positive light, not in a negative way, then we begin to become the change that we want. The next generation will be better than we are.

Find out more about Philly & Friends here.

Read Vese’s article for Huffington post here.