Author: kdev

Bo teachers visit UK and join the Day of the African Child

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

In June 2019 we welcomed four teachers from Bo; John Sandi, Lucy Amara, Kula Fangawa and Francis Jusu. This was the second part of a British Council funded Connecting Classrooms project. For some of us it was like welcoming old friends, for others the excitement of having a ‘real person’ from Bo in their classrooms, where pupils had been learning about life in Sierra Leone, but now met with that life, face-to-face. Staff and pupils exchanged details about what they had been learning around Global Goal 13: Climate Action and about recycling and reusing waste. Ecobricking had very much become a feature of school life both here and in Bo, thanks to our project.

As well as visiting all 15 of our link schools in Warwick District, the four experienced as much of UK life as we could possibly fit into their three week visit; a trip to the RSC to see The Taming of the Shrew, visits to big cities Birmingham, Coventry and London, time with a foodbank in Leamington learning that not all of the west is affluent, an evening with Songlines Community Choir, spectating county athletics, fun at Ten Pin bowling and meals in many different friends’ homes. Sharing all this was an absolute pleasure for all involved and many of us have cemented professional friendships for life.

The highlight of their visit for us was bringing together 550 children for the Day of the African Child, this year our 10^th Anniversary. As usual the children were treated to six workshops throughout the action-packed day.

Our four visitors told West African stories and ran Q&A sessions. Kwame from African Activities helped pupils produce printed fabric using Adinkra Symbols. Children burnt off some energy with dancing, learning an African playground game (Boys Norty) and drumming. Finally, in the huge marquee pupils sung their hearts out and danced to songs such as ‘Tem am tenki’ and ‘You are my brother.’

During the lunch break we fitted in a skype call with Bo where, despite technical problems, we could see lots of Bo school children gathered together at the OWL centre. We then paraded round the field with our banners and flags to the sounds of drumming.

We were delighted to welcome many VIPs, including Hayley Coyne and Mike McPaul from the British Council and Hannah Dixon, the Send My Friend to School campaigns manager. Others were: Bishop John of Warwick, April Gold representing the DBE, Chair of WDC Cllr George Illingworth, Deputy Mayor of Leamington Cllr Susan Rasmussen, Mayor of Warwick Cllr Neale Murphy and John Holland representing our MP Matt Western. They all spoke very highly of the children’s hard work in campaigning on important issues like the environment and children’s right to education – messages which came across powerfully in two pupil-led speeches in the Finale.

The day left no doubt in anyone’s minds that the school partnerships we sustain through OWL do a very powerful job in developing global citizens who care about each other and their planet.

OWL is very grateful to Leamington Town Council and the British Council, without whose funding these events would not have been possible.

Report by Liz Garrett

One World Link has been recognised in a major international award for town planning work as “a model for others to follow”.

One World Link, the friendship link between Warwick District and the city of Bo in Sierra Leone, has been working with Bo City Council for several years to develop a plan to guide the growth of the city.  Town planners from Warwick and Leamington teamed up with Prince Charles’ Prince’s Foundation and planning consultants Turley to deliver training and support for colleagues in Sierra Leone and have run several joint training workshops to help develop a plan for the city.  

Philip Clarke from One World Link said: “It is a great honour for our work to be recognised in this way.  Bo is currently a city of 175,000 people but, like many middle-sized African cities, is likely to grow massively in the next few years to three times this size by 2045.  Sierra Leone does not have an effective planning system, so developing any type of meaningful plan for the city is challenging to say the least.  We were, however, hugely encouraged by the way that local people in Bo, with no planning training, embraced the ideas behind developing their own plan.  It was really important that the ideas for how Bo should grow should come from them.  Hopefully the recognition from this award will give them further encouragement to take this important work forward.”

One World Link will be travelling to Sierra Leone in January to undertake further training and continue to support this work.

Clive Harridge, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth Association of Planners and a Warwickshire resident, presented the Award to Philip Clarke and John Archer at the Town Hall, Leamington Spa and said:

“The Commonwealth Association of Planners Awards champion the very best of planning from across the Commonwealth. The Award winners were selected by an eminent independent panel of judges and I am hugely delighted that the work One World Link and its partners have been undertaking in Bo has been Highly Commended.  It was a real privilege for me to present the Award in person to Philip Clarke and John Archer.  The planning work in Bo which is ongoing is of the highest standard and is being used as a model for others to follow across the Commonwealth.”

The Commonwealth Association of Planners (CAP) represents over 40,000 town planners from 28 countries throughout the Commonwealth.  The annual CAP Awards for Outstanding Planning Achievement in the Commonwealth champion the very best examples of planning practice in the Commonwealth.   

Local teachers connecting classrooms with Bo

• 

• 

• 

• 

In February 2019, three teachers from local primary schools, Maureen Greyson of All Saints, Leek Wootton, Louise Letchford of Emscote Infants, Warwick and Helen Newbold of St. Paul’s, Leamington took part in a Connecting Classrooms schools exchange programme, visiting and teaching in their linked schools in Bo.  The team were accompanied by Paul Atkins from the OWL committee.

Although Maureen had considerable experience working in Africa, this was a first time for the other two. It was a challenging experience, working in class sizes of up to 100, in excessive heat and without any of the modern facilities that they are used to. However, this was offset by the welcome and support from their host schools and our long-established friends in Bo. The teachers also ran a series of workshops focusing on ‘Critical Thinking and Problem Solving’, one of the core skills being championed by the British Council who helped fund the trip.

Our theme for the project work was based around one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of Climate Action and the workshop looked at ways in which plastic can be reduced and spreading this message to teachers and pupils in the schools in Bo. In addition, a field trip was organised involving two pupils and one teacher from each of the partner schools and they visited a variety of waste management and recycling sites in Bo.

They also managed to see something of the country, visiting a rural community that was the home to our, then chairman, Maada Fobay, where they were welcomed in a most overwhelming manner. For the teachers, this was a life enhancing experience that will have a profound effect on both their personal and professional lives.

When Mair Evans and Phil Clarke went to Bo in January-February 2019 they made a lot of visits to good friends of OWL as well as participating in a planning workshop (see News from Bo). They met with:

• Department for International Development in Freetown who are please with the progress of the waste project
• Home Leone project “Destiny Village”, a sustainable movement that envisages the end of slum living in Sierra Leone
• The Chair of Bo District Council, to discuss developments in local government
• Yemoh Town Clinic and Bo Childrens Hospital, to see the progress they are both making
• They also linked up with the visiting teachers, visiting linked schools and St Pauls School for the Blind

See their report

A final visit to Bo

Jane Knight reflects on thirty-seven years of One World Link.

In 2017, on what must have been about my 20th visit to Sierra Leone since 1981, I announced that I would not be returning as I am getting too old.

So, imagine their surprise when I turned up in Bo again at the end of last October! However, I had to go back to say good-bye to to Bishop Koroma whose health had deteriorated so badly in 2018, and he had ended up blind and very fragile.

I am sorry to say that he died 6 weeks after I left. I have lost three of my closest Sierra Leonean friends whom I first met in 1982, and who guided me through the years of establishing our One World Link partnership. Had they lived in this country, I am sure they would have lived much longer.

Going back 37 years after my first visit to Bo brought back many memories. Armed with a few contact names given to me in England from OXFAM and others, I spent 2 weeks asking various individuals if they would be interested in a friendship link between the people of Bo District and Warwick District? Would such a link (based on equality) be possible or desirable? It took 2 more visits in 1982 and 1983 to be confident that the answer was yes. In the early days there was much stopping and starting as people lost interest and communications were limited to snail mail and hand delivered letters via the early visitors, and the progress was small but it was there.

At least the first exchange visits between Bo and Leamington helped to recharge everyone’s batteries and the link started to grow.

Even today, the expectations especially in Bo were and are wide ranging. Doubts about changing the relationship between people in such different worlds, long influenced by donor recipient attitudes wrought by colonialism and charities over the years are slowly being eroded… White people are now being taken on as real friends with trust and love shared by many across the divide. We now have rich and inspiring partnerships between teachers, medical staff, and local government officers and members. From hesitant one to one school links, we have teacher training programmes across many of the primary schools in both Districts, and health worker and local government planning and waste schemes. The latter is reaching out country wide. And then there are the personal engagements and sheer love between all the OWL members.

On a practical level, there have been some dramatic changes, and in other ways nothing has changed. Most dramatic has been the development of mobile phones (by-passing any significant development of land lines). On my first visit to Bo, I had to queue at the post office and wait for the telephone operator to connect all the cables and plugs until ‘Hey Presto’! I heard my husband’s voice crackling down the line from England. Now, not only does everyone (even in the villages) have a phone, but they can call for free and send pictures of everything that is happening, on Whats App.

On my first visit the pound was worth 2 Leones. On this last visit, it was Le10,000.

The challenges of keeping OWL alive despite disappointments and frustrations remain, but our link survived the civil war and Ebola. There is further optimism now because of the political change last year from the Northern dominated APC government to a new President (Maada Bio) from the Southern region (SLPP) party. He has brought optimism that the country will at last, go forward. When I first arrived, the country was being stripped of all its wealth by the dictator, Siaka Stevens. During this last visit, Bo OWL arranged for me to meet the President (the last one I met was President Tejan Kabbah just after the civil war). This was a dramatic end to the experience of arriving in Sierra Leone, knowing no-one, and now leaving with a handshake from the President!