DM&C celebrates 25 years in business
- DM&C
Photo of Dayo Kefentse
In the fall of 2024, DAYO Media & Communications Inc. marked 25 years of connecting communities and amplifying impactful stories! We’re incredibly grateful for the support of our community over the past quarter-century by choosing us for their media and communications needs.
Twenty-five years later, our mission has remained the same: we are passionate about driving conversations that inspire action and change. We’ve stayed committed to causes that challenge us to talk, think and act. To mark our time as a team, we revamped our website and celebrated by hosting a multi-faceted event.
Community conversation and company celebration!
On November 27, 2024, DM&C collaborated with the Museums of Mississauga to host “A Legacy of Action: How Black Youth Shaped Mississauga’s Future.” This community conversation, which continued Dayo Kefentse’s Master’s degree research, explored the youth activism that emerged after the tragic death of 17-year-old Micheal Wade Lawson in 1988.
A Legacy of Action: How Black Youth Shaped Mississauga’s Future.
A poignant community conversation that reflected on the Black community’s resilience and activism in Mississauga today and during the 1980s and 1990s.
Following the panel, there was a reception celebrating DM&C’s 25th anniversary, where past and present clients shared their experiences of working with our team and offered their well wishes for the future. The audience heard from clients who represented three pillars of our work — arts, advocacy and education. Their presence, along with that of other clients, friends and family members, made this milestone a memorable night of community gathering and company celebration.
Photo of Colleen Russell-Rawlins, speaking at DM&C’s 25th anniversary
The reception was hosted by Farrell Hall and featured an inspiring lineup of speakers. Gregory Birkett, co-founder of Birkett Educational Consultants and co-creator of See Us, Learn Us: Teaching the Black Canadian Experience, highlighted Dayo’s unwavering commitment to supporting the Black community. Advocacy was championed by Kearie Daniel, Executive Director and Founder of the Black Women’s Institute for Health and co-founder of Parents of Black Children, as she reflected on the years she has collaborated with DM&C to support her work and bring her ideas to life. Colleen Russell-Rawlins, former Director of Education at the Toronto District School Board, shared her experiences of DM&C supporting her leadership communications and emphasized the importance of having a media team that understood her.
Event production team:
Aryana Singh, Project Manager & Reception Producer
Crystal Hay, Panel Producer
Raquel John Events, Event Planner
Jonathan Shaw, DJ
Shot by Selina, Selina McCallum, Videography
Reflections on 25 years in business/service
To commemorate 25 years in business, our team interviewed Dayo Kefentse, Founder and Managing Director of DM&C, as she shared some of the key lessons she has learned in creating a unique business and how the media and communications landscape has evolved since 1999.
“I realized that there were people in the community that wanted to do things really big, and that I could help make that happen. I was motivated to start my own business because… there were people who were asking me to assist them in getting their stories out there, and there were people in the community who were looking to take their ideas or take their product or take their event and make it bigger. I knew that I had the skills to do that. Whether it was by intuition or just by instinct or because of the real hard skills that I learned in my schooling and through my experiences at Canadian Press, CBC and other places, that I would be able to help them understand what it took to get their event out there. So once that happened a few more times, I'm like, you know what, maybe it's time to umbrella this into a business that can not only help the community, but I can also bring in people to learn these skills, too.”
Video production team:
Shot and edited by Seven Zero Productions
Aryana Singh, Project Manager
Curtis Hannam, Junior Public Relations Assistant
Natassia Morris, Producer
New milestone, new look
Websites weren’t a standard when DM&C launched in 1999. Most of the team’s first clients came through person-to-person networking and referrals. Since then, we’ve built and revised our company website but, for this milestone, we revitalized our online presence as a way of marking our growth and evolution over the years. This refreshed and accessible design not only highlights our rich history but also positions us to better engage with our customers and adapt to the ever-changing digital landscape. We appreciate the hard work and creativity of our web development team, whose collaborative efforts have brought this vision to life!
Web Development Team:
Marcelo De Souza, WordPress Developer
Khalia Badawi, Digital Designer
Aryana Singh, Project Manager
Off Course Media, Consultant and Accessibility Advisor
