Purpose Is - Yarminiah Rosa | Afrolatina Conceptual Creative Director and Artist

Purpose Is

A global, multi-media storytelling series exploring how people across cultures define, embody, and live their purpose. Comment end

About Project

Location

Honduras, Cuba, Ghana, New York, Bali, and more

Medium

Film,
Photography

Angelica — Puerto Rico / Florida After moving from Puerto Rico to Florida, my cousin Angelica became the muse for a new collection of jewelry exploring how purpose emerges through family, migration, and our relationship with nature. Her presence reconnected me to our roots and reminded me that purpose isn’t always grand—it’s also the quiet resilience of adapting, the ritual of making something beautiful out of what surrounds you. In her Purpose Is interview and portrait series, we explored how the natural world isn’t separate from us; it reflects us, and we reflect it. Her story reminded me that purpose often lives in tending to where we come from, even when we’ve had to leave it behind.

Enson — Cuba Enson noticed my camera before I noticed him. With an easy charisma and practiced charm, he asked what I was working on. I told him about Purpose Is—and then turned the question back to him. Would he be open to sharing his story? He agreed without hesitation, a moment that felt both spontaneous and intentional. The interaction wasn’t neutral. I was a visitor, a woman, and someone visibly documenting a place that wasn’t my own. Enson, aware of this dynamic, navigated it with streetwise fluency - curious about my project, but also savvy in how he presented himself, gently steering the conversation toward his business, desires, and needs. That moment crystallized something important about purpose: it isn’t abstract. It’s shaped by your surroundings, by what’s required of you to survive, to connect, to be seen. Enson embodied the nuance of purpose as performance, as hustle, as hospitality. I was there to witness, to listen, and to let the moment unfold as he told his story of purpose.

Emma — Tanzania In 2016, I was introduced to Emma through a friend of a friend who recommended him as a guide to a nearby Maasai village. At the time, Emma was a rising leader in his community and already deeply engaged in storytelling as a filmmaker. I set out to study traditional Maasai beading and the cultural and sustainability practices that shaped their craftsmanship. Emma and I traveled to his village where I was able to interview and learn directly from the women who carried these traditions. Mornings began with the soft clang of cowbells, as his cousin corralled the livestock into handmade wooden fences. Evenings ended on hilltops, watching the sky fade with his brothers and uncles, all of us giving quiet thanks for the simplicity of the moment. I came looking for jewelry, but I found a worldview—a rhythm of life that placed community, gratitude, and continuity at the center. Emma and I formed a friendship rooted in our shared curiosity. His commitment to women’s rights in his community left a lasting impression. He spoke openly about his fight to educate his community to oppose female circumcision, the local laws that shaped daily life, and his hopes to tell his people’s stories with dignity and nuance. Through him, I began to see purpose not just as an internal quest but as something communal, shaped by responsibility, protection, and voice.

full project summary

Through intimate interviews and portrait photography, Purpose Is features voices from Tanzania, Cuba, Puerto Rico, New York, and beyond—documenting how purpose is shaped by community, ancestry, daily rituals, and creative expression. What began as a personal inquiry has evolved into a growing archive of cultural insight, offering diverse perspectives on meaning, identity, and belonging in a rapidly changing world.

Purpose Is began with a question: what does purpose mean around the world? At the time, I was a sophomore in college searching for what purpose meant to me. I hadn’t seen many examples of it outside my immediate community, and I wondered- how do people in other cultures understand purpose? Is it something they seek, inherit, or simply live?

That question became a journey. From there, I followed purpose wherever it led—across rural villages in East Africa, through the streets of Havana, New York City, and Bali—talking with pastors, farmers, elders, teenagers, musicians, street vendors, and more.

Each edition of Purpose Is is a portrait of the interviewee in that moment, and of my own evolving understanding of purpose. Today, I see my purpose as creating space to reflect and elevate the purpose in others. By expanding our vocabulary and references around purpose, this work hopes to inspire purpose-driven living in all of us.