His vision was to continue the legacy he started in Liberia, West Africa. His goal was to make FunTimes Magazine one of the most impactful print media that would effectively articulate the story of Africans, African Americans, and Caribbeans in the Diaspora.

On October 31, Eric John Nzeribe, Publisher of FunTimes was honored by the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists (PABJ) at the WHYY Studios and given the “Trailblazer Award.” Nzeribe is being hailed in the Diaspora community for unilaterally transplanting the magazine that started as a comic strip during the Liberian civil war to Philadelphia in 2007.

In Philadelphia, Nzeribe definitively coined out the magazine’s mission to “Educate, Entertain, and Empower.” Against this backdrop, his dream is to build a magazine that is equally “poised as the predominant culture and lifestyle magazine for the African American, African and Caribbean communities in the Mid-Atlantic States.

Dressed in a cream Nero short-sleeve shirt with matching pants and a Kente scarf donning his shoulders, Nzeribe spoke of our shared commonalities when he said, “If African and Caribbean immigrant understood that Blacks activism paved the way for the freedom we enjoy today and if African American embraced the shared commonalities of slavery and colonialism with their African brethren, the Diaspora could heal and be a thriving community.”

Nzeribe reframed FunTimes’ objectives in these words: “We celebrate Africa and the Diaspora. We showcase the positive people and things in our community. And we provide a platform for the Diasporic discussion be it the history of the man/woman beyond the 400 years of enslavement in this country.”