YouTube created a multi-year $100-million fund to amplify and lift Black voices and ideas. De La Rosa is one of five other Canadian creators who have been chosen for the funding.
Chris De La Rosa’s videos cooking food from his native Trinidad have garnered 90 million views, and wants you to know that you can make Caribbean food no matter where you are in the world.
“It’s important for me to put all food and all culinary culture in a positive light,” he said. “And not just that, but in a niche that breaks it down so anyone can make it no matter where in the world they’re based.”
The Hamilton-based creator does all that and more on his channel, CaribbeanPot — which is shy of 800,000 subscribers. His videos have also garnered a combined total of 90 million views. His channel is the YouTube counterpart of CaribbeanPot.com, a blog De La Rosa started as a way to collect recipes for his kids to make someday, and to document the rich cuisine that he grew up with.
Now the channel is part of #YouTubeBlack Voices class of 2022, where creators on the site receive funding and support to help grow and enhance their YouTube channels.
YouTube allocated a multi-year to a $100-million fund to amplify and lift Black voices and ideas. De La Rosa is one of five other Canadian creators who have been chosen for the fund.
With additional funding, he plans on telling the bigger stories behind the food he makes.
Many of the meals De La Rosa knows and grew up with aren’t documented or precise measurements.
“I had to create everything from scratch,” he said, “and I wanted it to be very easy for them to recreate the flavours that they enjoyed growing up, even right here in Canada.”
Growing up in Trinidad, he said, everyone knew how to cook — whether you were a boy or girl.
“My parents have two boys and two girls, and they never assigned gender roles back then as would be normal in the Caribbean and many other places,” he said.
“My mom always wanted her sons, especially her boys, to be independent and do their own thing.”
When he was in his mid-teens, De La Rosa immigrated to Canada, where he lived with his aunt and cousins in Hamilton.
After he was required to make some of the meals, he realized he wanted to have a taste of home again more than ever before.
“When […] it’s -20 degrees outside, it’s overcast, it’s snowing, you want to feel like you’re part of the Caribbean again,” he said.
When it comes to reaching out to other Black creators on YouTube, De La Rosa finds his inspiration is helpful to those creating similar content as him.
“If you look now, you’ll find 15, 20, 30, 40 different channels with the same sort of topic that I’ve been doing since 2009. And if you look closely at the way they present their work, the way they edit, the way they shoot, the way they speak on camera, you will see elements of my channel on those.”
“I have personally reached out to a lot of these other YouTubers, these Black YouTubers, Indian Youtubers — whatever race they are, and I say, ‘Can I help, how can I help? I’ve been doing this for so long.'”
‘The space has room for everyone’
Although what they do can come across as copying the content that he creates, De La Rosa reminds himself that the creative space of YouTube and other online platforms is a place to grow for everyone.
“The space has room for everyone,” he said. “It’s not a competition.”
Tosin Ayeronwi’s Youtube Channel is riddled with vlogs, life updates, and conversations pertaining to her Nigerian audience.
The Ottawa YouTuber is also part of the five content creators chosen for YouTube’s class of 2022. As of now, she has 21,300 subscribers and it’s growing by the minute.
Although based in Canada, her audience is also a global one — reaching the likes of fans in the U.K., the U.S., and her hometown in Nigeria.