Newsletter : September 2005

 

 

50p (free to members)

 
______________________________________www.oneworldlink.org.uk______________________________________

 

A most successful year

FULL REPORT INSIDE  ►►►

 

 

ANNUAL MEETING

and A.G.M.

 

Saturday, 22nd October 2005

from 12 noon

Bath Place Community Venture, Leamington Spa

starting with a simple meal and refreshment

 

Mr Joe Pyne, Mrs Josephine Komeh, Mr Vandy Bockarie

Primary Headteachers visiting us from Bo, will give their first reactions upon the completion of their

2-week reciprocal visit and programme to their respective partner schools, other linking schools

and the wider educational community

 

We are indebted to Bill Evans who has done a good stint as Chair and made a very great contribution to the Link.  He will be stepping down from this role at the A.G.M. and nominations for the posts of Chairperson, Vice-Chairperson and Membership Secretary will be particularly welcomed.  Also volunteers for a number of other tasks would be appreciated (see the previous June Newsletter!)

Please make every effort to attend

 

 

 

BUILDING COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS BETWEEN

UK AND SIERRA LEONE

A CONFERENCE

 

The Town Hall, Leamington Spa

12 noon Friday 2nd December – 5 p.m. Saturday 3rd December

 

This conference will bring together community based groups in the UK who have links with partners in Sierra Leone.  This includes towns and neighbourhoods, local authorities, schools, Diaspora, faith-based groups and any other group with a link.  The purpose of the conference is to learn more about each other, and to promote and develop community-based links

All Enquiries to:

Pepi O’Neill, Administrator, UKOWLA, The Upper Office, The Dutch Barn, Elm Tree Park, Manton, Wiltshire, SN8 1PS

Tel:  01672 861001  pepi@ukowla.org.uk

 

One World Link (Warwick-Bo) are hosting and helping to plan the Conference.  We need hosts and stewards and as many delegates as possible.  If you can help or wish to take part, please contact John Myers: 01926 425403; jmyers4544@aol.com

 

AFRICA AND THE WORLD

A SERIES OF SEMINARS

Places are still available for this series of fortnightly seminars presented by African postgraduate students at Warwick University, and providing a unique opportunity to learn from African perspectives.

From 7p.m.to 9 p.m. (includes coffee break) on Thursdays from 22 September Warwickshire College, Warwick New Road, Leamington Spa..

There will be a single registration fee of £5 for the whole series (concessions)

 

For further details contact Sheila Grainger 01926 884931 SGRAINGER@WARKSCOL.AC.UK

 

 


 

 

 

 

The Bo

One World Link

Community

Centre,

August 2005.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hussine Yumkella in Bo

 

My visit to Sierra Leone during the summer was mainly for holiday but I spent a week in Bo to make further progress on the developing school links between Warwick District and Bo, and to help Bo Town council with its preparations for conducting a Waste Audit that was designed by the Waste Management Team in WCC. We had hoped that the audit would be carried out while I was in Sierra Leone but due to the late arrival of the shipment of materials, which were necessary to conduct the survey, it had to be done in my absence and we are still awaiting the results.

 

British local authorities recently initiated a “Task group for local government collaboration with Sierra Leone” in July, to ensure the close coordination of activities with partners in Sierra Leone as a mechanism of strengthening the capacities of the newly elected local councils, drawing on the practical experiences and skills of their UK partners with the aim of improving the delivery of local services. It has been working closely with the key local government leaders in Sierra Leone to develop plans for a consolidated project to support the development of local government there in the coming 3-5 years.

 

A multi-purpose visit has therefore been organised between the 19th and 23rd of September with the chair of the Task group, Geoffrey Calvert, from West Dunbartonshire, myself from WCC and representatives from CLGF, LGIB and ODPM. The main aim of the visit is to meet with the primary donors of the project (World Bank, DFID and EU) to agree a timetable for the delivery of a multi-sectoral local government support programme with identified resources for its delivery and sufficient information for its initiation. The participants during the course of the week will be spending a day in Bo to conduct a working meeting with Dr Wusu Sannoh, the Chair of Bo Town Council and the newly appointed President of the Local Authorities Association of Sierra Leone, and other invited representatives to develop and agree upon the draft programme proposal for supporting the association and to establish a strategic plan to fundraising for the project.

 

There will be a visit report, shared with all members of the UK task group and discussed at the next task group meeting. The report will include agreed next steps for the task group in programme implementation and fundraising.

 

 

 

 

SCHOOLS

Welcome

to Mr Joe Pyne, Mrs Josephine Komeh,                       and Mr Vandy Bockarie, Primary Headteachers from Bo, visiting their partner schools at Brookhurst, Ferncumbe and St Anthony’s for 2 weeks, 10th – 21st October.  They will also be visiting other linking schools and the wider educational community.  If anyone else wishes to participate, please contact Sarah Davis at Ferncumbe School: 01926 484318 or admin@3210.wgfl.net.

 

Welcome

to North Leamington Community School and Arts College who have decided to link with The Ahmadiyya School in Bo.  We wish both schools a long and mutually beneficial future relationship.

 

Thanks

to Aylesford School and Language College for a staggering contribution of £1,000, raised by their non-uniform day. £900 has been earmarked for teaching resources at the Community Centre including emailing facilities to aid communication and £100 for the Bo Mayor’s Youth Fund.

 

The Primary Teachers’ Group are meeting for the first time this term on September 20th after a very successful year in 2004-5.  This has become a key group in encouraging activity in all our linked schools, representing:

Brookhurst Primary School,

Clapham Terrace Primary School,

Emscote Infants School,

Ferncumbe Primary School, Hatton

St Anthony’s Primary School,

St Mary’s Primary School,   Warwick

St Peter’s Primary School,

Telford Infants School

Up for grabs: Sierra Leone’s water!

The World development Movement is currently campaigning against our Government’s apparent policy to pursue privatisation of Sierra Leone’s water (in order to qualify for ongoing aid from the UK), in spite of evidence from many countries that water privatisation creates more problems than it solves.  For further information see www.wdm.org.uk/campaigns or the current issued of WDM’s ‘ACTION’ (phone 42863 or email owl@31cv311tp.freeserve.co.uk for a copy.

 


WARWICK DISTRICT ONE WORLD LINK WITH BO

Chair’s Annual Report – October 2005

 

At this time of year I have usually given a brief overview of the year which I am sure will be complemented by more comprehensive reports from others on some aspects of our activities.  This will be my final report as Chair, as I am relinquishing that role at the AGM.  I became Chair in 2001, after completing a term as Mayor of Leamington; I am handing it on now in the expectation that I will be asked to take on other civic responsibilities next year.

This has been a very busy year both in Bo and in Warwick.  There have been a number of promising developments which, with careful nurturing, will take us to new and more effective levels of activity.

Last year I reported that the new Mayor of Bo Town Council, Dr. Wusu Sanoh, had invited Councillor Mota Singh, the Mayor of Royal Leamington Spa, to visit Bo.  We were delighted that Mota Singh was able to undertake that visit in January 2005, accompanied by Hussine Yumkella, whose visit was sponsored by Warwickshire County Council, together with Janet Alty and me from the Warwick OWL Committee.  Councillor Singh was, of course, first and foremost representing Leamington Town Council as a visitor to Bo Town Council and during the visit he and Dr. Sanoh signed a friendship agreement between the two town councils.  However, during the visit Mota Singh, wearing his County Councillor “hat”, was also able to work closely with Hussine in discussions she was having with various agencies to open up areas of dialogue between Bo and the County Council.  Hussine is a Sierra Leonean with very good contacts in Bo, so her participation was very productive for us.

Janet Alty provided important support to Mota Singh in fulfilling his role as a visiting Mayor.  In addition to this she had a most fruitful time working with members of the women’s Kayoma movement, which had grown out of Theresa Bangali’s earlier visit to Warwick OWL.  We were all able to share in the celebratory launch of Kayoma.

One of my main roles was to liaise with Johannes Mallah and the other members of the Bo OWL Committee.  I was also looking to firm up arrangements for a visit by two young people from Bo to this District;  I am pleased that Johannes, working through the Bo District Youth Council, identified two young people to do that.  My third, most enjoyable task was to link up with old friends from my first visit to Bo, including some of the projects that had been helped by my “Bo Fund”.  I was really impressed by the tremendous change for the better since 2001 and by the optimism for the future shown by so many people.

Mota Singh and Janet in particular, but in some part myself too, visited a good umber of our link schools and did a lot to re-invigorate that process.  All of us were extremely pleased as well to visit the Bo OWL community centre, which was then almost complete (Phase One) and is now in use.  A tremendous achievement for Bo OWL and a source of great satisfaction to us who had raised much of the money!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have left myself rather little space to speak about other events.  Dr Wusu Sanoh did visit us on a reciprocal visit in March, on his way home from a conference in Scotland.

Towards the end of April George Mbayo and Jane Nyambe arrived as the first leg of a hoped for Youth Exchange programme.  Due to circumstances at our end, the visit programme was not as had been originally envisaged, but I am very grateful, particularly to Dave Jones, but also to others in the Youth & Community Service, for making their stay interesting and worthwhile.  Unfortunately Jane had the misfortune to go down with malaria during her visit, from which she has now made a good recovery.  We are grateful to Leamington Town Council for providing the core funding which enabled this visit to happen.

Our most recent visitor was Chief Kamanda Gbonge, Paramount Chief of the Kakua chiefdom, who was with us very briefly in August.  This might be an appropriate time to mention our developing relationship with a London group called Bo District Descendants Association (BODDA), who came to our AGM last year.

One of the outcomes of our January visit is that Hussine Yumkella now has a brief from Warwickshire County Council which enables her to develop local authority links with Bo in a way which has never been possible before in our District.  We are also delighted that Councillor Mota Singh has been designated as the link county councillor with us.

I haven’t got round to some of the exciting developments going on now, but I am sure you will hear about them elsewhere in the Newsletter and when you come to the AGM.  We hope that, at the AGM, we shall be able to welcome three head teachers from Bo who will be here on the first part of a teacher exchange, another exciting new development for us.

Bill Evans

 

Lee Hales

 

Thanks to Lee for all the work he has done in the I.T. field for One World Link, including his visit to Bo and work there, now that he has completed his degree at Warwick University and moved away.  Keep in touch Lee!

 


 



What is it all about?

 

It was a hot, sunny day at the beginning of August when about twelve of us, committee members and others, met together in Jane Knight’s garden to spend some time talking about our Aims and Objectives.  We had felt for a long time that committee meetings were so full of business that we did not have time to discuss the bigger picture.  This meeting had been arranged to try to address that need.

 

The afternoon was led very ably and imaginatively by Maria Franchi, who divided us into two groups, ‘for’ and ‘against’, to debate the motion that: “The activities of One World Link directly contribute to the achievement of its Aims and Objectives “.  After discussion amongst ourselves, we had speeches from a proposer and seconder from each side and then contributions from the ‘floor’. This was not too easy since several of us found ourselves speaking against our own very strong feelings and beliefs!

 

The outcome of the afternoon were the Aims, Principles, Objectives an the right, which we said would be put to a future meeting of the wider membership.  We also said that we would put this to our friends in Bo to see to what extent we could agree.

 

What do you think?

Aim:

Our purpose is to encourage and sustain friendship between the communities in Bo, Sierra Leone and Warwick District, U.K., so contributing to world-wide understanding and peace.

 

Principles:

We will do this according to the following principles: Mutuality, Equity, Sustainability, Human Rights, Serendipity, and Diversity.

 

Objectives:

We will do this with the following objectives:

·           To raise awareness of issues of global relationships  (adult education, public meetings, presentations to groups, etc.)

·           To advance mutual benefit to school education in each community

·           To develop interaction between community groups in each community

·           To support and encourage person to person interaction

·           To encourage a relationship between local authorities and other public bodies in each community

·           To address the economic imbalance between the two communities and support Bo-OWL to play a part in the recovery of its community from war and poverty

·           To continue to support exchange visits

 

Evaluation:

We will monitor our achievement of these Objectives for effectiveness and compliance with our overall Aim and Principles.

 

 

 

 
Deadline For LETTERS To BO : 22nd October

 

Remember that our visitors will be returning on or about October 24th.  If you have letters for them to take back, please make sure you bring them to the AGM on 22nd  October, or send them to OWL POSTBOX at 31 The Greswoldes, Radford Semele, Leamington Spa, CV31 1TP before that date.

 

 

 

 

 

BO DISTRICT DESCENDANTS ASSOCIATION

(BODDA)

takes the pleasure of inviting all members of One World Link Warwick District to their 1st Anniversary   This event will be held on Saturday 1st October 2005 at the Aylesbury Youth Centre, Inville Walk, off Thurlow Street, London SE17 2HY from 6:30pm to 10:00pm.

Would anyone be free to go to represent us?

Please contact John Myers (see below) if interested.

 

 

 

Write to someone in Bo?

 

Frank Joseph Massaquoi, aged 56

Ibrahim Khalilu Manneh, aged 46

Josephine Yennge Bappie, aged 29

Magdalene Hawa Kamara, aged 48

Fatmata Jebeh Davies, aged 43

 

These and others would very much like to write to someone over here.  Please contact Brian Austin, 31 The Greswoldes, Radford Semele, Leamington Spa, CV31 1TP, 01926 428635, or owl@31cv311tp.freeserve.co.uk for details.

 

 

If uou have any questions, please email: info@oneworldlink.org.uk

 

 

Newsletter produced for OWL by Brian Austin: news@oneworldlink.org.uk