Leamington pantomime fundraising supports revitalised community centre in Bo

Money raised by local people has enabled a community centre in Sierra Leone to get a vital new lease of life.

One World Link was the nominated charity at the 2023 pantomime “Jack & the Beanstalk” which took place at the Spa Centre in Leamington Spa during December 2023 and January 2024.  Support from local people, including through audience collections every night, contributed to us raising a grand total of £9,572.50.

Earlier this month, a group from One World Link, Paul Atkins, Chris King, Anthony Wood and Philip Clarke, were able to visit Sierra Leone to see how the money had been spent.

Paul Atkins, Chair of One World Link said: “One World Link (OWL) owns a community centre in Bo, the city in Sierra Leone with which we have had a local friendship link for over 40 years.  The centre needed some vital investment, and the money raised through the 2023 pantomime provided a lifeline to allow us to support it.

“There is a new group of young people in Bo who had some exciting ideas for how to breathe new life into the OWL Centre.  With the support of local people here in Warwick District, and the generosity of Warwick District Council and the staff at the Spa Centre, we were able to provide the funding to kick start this project. 

“When we visited Bo earlier this month, we were blown away by the enthusiasm and energy that these young people have brought to the centre, and the results they have achieved.  In a few short months, they have invested in basic equipment and have funded an advertising campaign to increase the use of the Centre.  There was a real buzz about the place. In the week we were there, there were workshops on supporting mental health and wellbeing and on town planning, as well as a graduation ceremony from a local college.  Sierra Leoneans love their football, and the Centre has also become a safe place for young people for people to watch matches, with games being screened most nights. It also provides a convenient meeting place for the teachers from the 15 primary schools in Bo that are linked with those here in Warwick District to share curriculum ideas and good practice. OWL is also looking to continue to develop a health link in the Bo district and the Centre gives a focus for that work.

“The money donated by local people has helping to give the One World Link Centre a new lease of life and a sustainable future.  I would like to take this opportunity to again thank local people for their generosity.”

Two visits to Bo coming up

We are arranging two visits to Bo to maintain our friendship link and arrange our busy programme of forthcoming activities:

Most immediately, four members of the UK OWL Committee (Paul Atkins, Chris King, Anthony Wood and Phil Clarke) will be visiting Bo for ten days in early November. The most important aspect of any visit is to link up with OWL friends in Bo, but we will also have a packed programme of meetings and visits. These will include with the “youth group” within OWL who have been investing in improvements to the OWL Centre, with a number of schools and the teachers’ group in Bo, and with the City and District Councils as we continue to support urban planning initiatives in the city and beyond. We will also spend a short time in Freetown where we hope to meet up with the High Commissioner and with friends there before flying home.

Liz Garrett, our Schools Coordinator, is looking to arrange a teachers’ visit to Bo in early 2025. She will be leading a group with three other teachers, where they will work in linked schools and arranging training for teachers in Bo. Linked schools in Warwick and Leamington are also preparing some project work from local children which Paul, Chris, Anthony and Phil will be taking to Bo next month.

OWL at the Leamington Ecofest

The Day of the African Child, June 2024, at St Paul’s Primary School, Leamington

St Paul’s Primary School was a noisy place on 7^th June as some five hundred children participated in the Day of the African Child. The day started with the sound of African drums as the children from fourteen local schools paraded around the school field holding up banners proclaiming their links with schools in Bo, Sierra Leone.

After the parade the children gathered in a large marquee and heard about the origin of the Day of the African Child as a commemoration of the tragic day in 1976 when school children were killed in Soweto when protesting about their poor education. The marquee was completely silent as the children sat for a minute’s reflection. They were told how the day also serves to celebrate children of Africa and this was the theme for the rest of the day as the children went off to workshops with an African flavour.

The sound of enthusiastic drumming came from two classrooms where they learnt basic techniques and rhythms on djembes. There was music in the hall where they were learning African dance moves. The marquee was filled with the sound of singing as the children practised the three songs for the day: “Tel am tenki”, “Today is the African Child Day” and “You are my brother”. There were drama workshops in two other classrooms where the children walked, crawled and slithered as African wild animals. In the field they kicked footballs, did jumps and threw bean bags; activities that may be found in African schools. Finally, in the quiet corner of the forest school, they listened to traditional African stories about Anansi, a very smart but mischievous spider who always got into trouble.

The day ended with a grand finale in the marquee with the happy sound of the children singing at the top of their voices and dancing energetically. One of the groups performed a drum routine. St Paul’s Year 6 children spoke about the 222 million children in the world whose education has been disrupted or prevented by emergencies. St Paul’s School have been studying UN Global Goal 12 – Sustainable Consumption and Production – and a group explained practical steps we should all be taking at home. Representatives of all our linked schools presented petitions to Cllr Jess Harrison asking the government to support foundational education in Africa which she will present to our MP after the general election.  We were fortunate to have the Mayor of Leamington (Cllr Judith Clarke) and our former MP (Matt Western) to witness the event. They spoke of the joy of the occasion and the importance of education and the link.

One World Link is very grateful to Leamington Town Council for a generous grant that enabled this event to take place. We also thank our workshop leaders in dance (Aida Diop), drumming (Vieux Bakayoko and Ronnie Kirya of Beatfeet Drumming), storytelling (Jason Buck), drama (Lizzie of The Little People Drama Company and Helen Newbold of St Paul’s) and sports (Pete Hawkins and Ava Barnes of St Paul’s). This is the second time that St Paul’s has hosted the Day of the African Child and their collaboration with Liz Garrett, our Education Coordinator, in the organisation and management of this complex event have been exceptional, for which we thank the Dep[uty Head, Caroline Newell.

Thank you Leamington! Pantomime-goers donate over £9,000 to OWL

Pantomime crowds were in generous mood as they encountered One World Link volunteers with collecting donations. They donated some £9,000 at the thirty seven performances of Jack and the Beanstalk at the Leamington Spa Centre.

OWL volunteers, wearing blue tabards and holding buckets decorated by school children, stood in the gangways and collected money from the audience as they left. In addition to allowing us to collect these donations, Warwick District Council donated over £700 from the sale of tickets to an invited audience, taking the grand total to £9,571. We are very grateful to them, the Spa Centre and the cast.

This income is particularly welcome in view of our programme for the coming year, including the Day of the Africa Child in June and possible exchange visits by teachers.

Members and Friends are invited to our AGM on the 27th January 2024 at St Paul’s church hall, Leicester St, Leamington Spa. We do look forward to meeting as many members and friends as possible in person at this event. The meeting will start at 2.00pm

We will aim to keep the formal part of the meeting to a minimum and then review both recent activities and also look back at 40+ years of the friendship link.

For more information please contact secretary@oneworldlink.org.uk

Prof Nancy Edwards to talk in Leamington

Nancy Edwards is coming to St Paul’s Church, Leamington on Friday, 20th October at 7pm to tell us about her experiences with the title “Improving Community Health Care in Low Income Countries”. All members and friends of OWL – and any others interested – are invited. Please email chair@oneworldlink.org.uk

Nancy Edwards is a nurse and epidemiologist who worked in the field of global health and development for forty years. She is a Distinguished Professor and Professor Emerita at the University of Ottawa and the recipient of numerous awards including three honorary doctoral degrees. 

She lived in the Sierra Leone for five years, two of them based in Bo where she worked with the Bo-Pujehun Rural Integrated Development Program. One of her collaborators there was Dr. David Moinina Senge who is now the country’s Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education. Prof Edwards is the author of Not One, Not Even One: A Memoir of Life-altering Experiences in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Her stories of village life convey the ravages of tuberculosis, threats of witchcraft and tragedies of deaths related to pregnancy, childbirth and newborn tetanus. She celebrates local advocates for health improvements — mothers, traditional birth attendants and village health committees. 

Teachers’ visit to UK boosts school links

We were thrilled and somewhat amazed when five Bo OWL members got their visas first time! This was thanks to an OWL friend in Freetown – Michael Dennis (previously British Council) – without whose help we’d have never negotiated the whole, complex and costly visa process.

Our visitors enjoyed the hospitality of seven new host families who had offered through the network of Leamington and Warwick schools. Over the years, many OWL members have become interested in the link through offering to host and we hope this is to continue with many new friendships forged this year. A programme of school visits, meetings and experiences was organised to enable the team to learn about British education and culture as well as some of the issues we have in common such as Climate change. Sight-seeing in London, Birmingham and Coventry plus Fish & Chips, Ten Pin Bowling and a Curry at the Himalaya restaurant were all part of a packed itinerary.

Jennifer Abulai, Columba Sherriff, Nemahun Vandy and Elizabeth Allie all spent time getting to know their link schools – attending assemblies, observing lessons and joining staff-room discussions, as well as visiting other linked schools where they shared stories about life in Sierra Leone and learnt about our curriculum and methods.

Also among the team was Teachers’ Coordinator John Sandi who is now helping with the management of the OWL Centre in Bo – amongst visiting many schools John was able to spend time in discussion with the UK committee, visit Campion Secondary School and JBC Skills Training, a computer business in Coventry (who have given desk-top computers to Bo OWL).

The visit culminated with the annual Day of the African Child event where the visiting team, dressed in their beautiful, matching ‘ashobi’ surprised us with a special song they had prepared for the Finale Assembly which sang of us working together in friendship while naming every school. See the pictures of the event. We certainly hope and expect that this visit serves to strengthen the bonds which had suffered through the dry years of covid. We recognise that OWL partnerships are really very unique in offering these face-to-face opportunities – we look forward to working with strengthened links where friends on both sides are able to play their part in building understanding and support.

200 Trees Planted in School Campaign

Children in local primary schools including Brookhurst (Leamington), All Saints’ Juniors (Warwick), St Margaret’s and St Joseph’s (Whitnash) have planted trees as part of a joint Climate Action project with their One World Link partner schools in Bo, Sierra Leone.

One World Link was delighted when Leamington Town Council agreed to sponsor tree planting in Bo as its way of marking 40 years of friendship between the two areas.  Since then, over 200 trees have been planted in total – some at each of the link schools and some on community land owned by OWL in Bo.

The children’s’ project work focused on the importance of trees for a sustainable future. Pupils were inspired by the work of Wangari Maarthi, Kenyan environmentalist and activist, reading a book about her life – Trees of Peace. They also learnt about the Mayor of the capital Freetown whose ambition is to plant 1,000,000 trees over two years reversing some of the damage caused by deforestation and landslides – Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr’s aim is to turn Freetown into a Treetown!

Liz Garrett, OWL schools’ coordinator and teacher said, “Children are passionate about protecting wildlife and nature and have been so enthusiastic about tree planting. One boy even donated the sycamore sapling he’d grown from seed during lockdown – it’s now growing on our field! One World Link has always had strong support from Leamington Town Council, and we are both delighted and very grateful that it has chosen to support this project as part of its way of marking our 40 years of friendship with Bo.”

The Mayor of Royal Leamington Spa, Cllr Nick Wilkins, said: “Leamington Town Council were delighted to actively support and sponsor tree planting in Bo in Sierra Leone.  We have worked with our colleagues in One World Link planting trees in some of our Leamington primary schools too as part of a joint Climate Action project. Engaging with children around the globe could not come at a more critical time with climate change on the rise.   We are proud of our links with Bo, and our planting projects is just one, that has bound us in friendship for 40 years.”

See also the tree planting campaign in Bo

Read the press release

This was our first visit back to Bo since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. It was an incredibly positive trip with many productive meetings and new contacts made. Richard Hall and Helena White from the OWL UK health team were accompanied by a midwifery colleague, Zoe Milburn.

We identified a number of prospects for future collaboration:

• We understand that 15 of the small Peripheral Health Units have been identified for upgrading to provide at least basic maternity care and we have offered support with this in terms of training and supporting the staff working in these remote units.
• CARE International who are a large charity tackling the underlying causes of poverty and social injustices while supporting ways of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular the universal right to health care. We are hoping to work in partnership with them in the future within the framework of their health worker training programmes.
• Linking Bo Government Hospital (BGH) with South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust hospital. This would be an educational link, supporting local staff to improve their skills in a variety of disciplines.

We delivered our basic training package to the staff of Yemoh Town Health Centre – this time focusing primarily on the use of the partograph, a specific form used during labour that will easily highlight the need for referral to a tertiary unit, and Neo natal resuscitation. We also provided training in estimating blood loss during childbirth (using home-made ‘blood’ and handed over two emergency paramedic backpacks full of essential supplies.

One World Link is based on long and firm friendships and this visit was particularly heart-warming as we all felt we had been through a bit of an ordeal with the pandemic and were so pleased to be back amongst such warm and welcoming friends. We hope to visit again in January.

Click here to Read Helena’s full report