Including Musical Performance by:

McNally School Partnership

We have a partnership with McNally School in Edmonton to continue raising awareness and support for the people of Sierra Leone through the Tamaraneh Society. It is pretty exciting to see what young people can do when they get motivated! To launch our work with McNally School we have put our creative juices to work and built a white board infomercial together called “McNally Rally for Romano”.

Click below to see the 2 minute clip:

Another Tamaraneh Year marked at our Annual General Meeting at Koulture’s restaurant!

We held our annual general meeting at Koultures Afro-Continental restaurant this year on October 27th, 2011. It was great to see people, recall our triumphs and challenges and support a local restaurant. Pictures are up on our Facebook Page and a pdf of our annual report is here

Kids Go Global Partnership with Trickster Theatre

Another interesting partnership is emerging through Trickster Theatre’s Kids Go Global project. The details are still in the works but you can take a look at the work already done to see where we might be heading with them in a partnership with Tamaraneh. The contract is signed, we now need to get the project rolling. Here is the website: http://www.trickstertheatre.com/, and you can also download a pdf document explaining more about the Trickster Theatre Kids Go Global Project

Grant for school roof replacement has been approved by Community Spirit

Our submission for a grant for the school roof replacement that was done after torrential rain and winds destroyed our primary school roof a year and a half ago. We had to beg and borrow to get matching funds for the roof in place, but it looks like all the hard work paid off. Unfortunately we have not yet seen the money because the format for providing the cheques is now accompanied by an official presentation by an MLA and this requires that we wait in line for that moment and photo opportunity. But we promise to post the “official” photo with the cheque in hand as soon as we get it!

Change for Children fundraising has earned us the funds for an on-site employee in Sierra Leone

Thanks to the ongoing efforts of Change For Children, we now have enough money in our account there to pay for a salaried employee on site in Sierra Leone. This is something we have desperately needed and are happy to be able to set up. We have a job description and will be advertising in January for the position.

Decision about teacher salaries

We originally intended to set up the school component of our development work so that the Ministry of Education of Sierra Leone takes on teacher salaries after three years of support from the Tamaraneh Society. We have letters and certificates guaranteeing this from the government but they have not fulfilled their promise. Our teachers who are Tamaraneh supported have been sharing their salaries with the teachers who were supposed to be paid by the government and they just informed us that they have been doing this for three years. We could lobby the government but it likely will not result in any real action. In the mean time we are faced with a dilemma: paying salaries from Canada is not a sustainable way to run a development project but if we do not continue the salary payments, the schools will shut down. Teachers have refused to come to work since we stopped payments in June 2011 and the government employed teachers have still not received their salaries. The community will only be able to support its teachers when it has a stronger economic infrastructure. We are working on getting micro-businesses and industry initiatives started in the area but this will take several years to be solid. In the mean time all our work will be for nothing if the children are not able to get even a basic education.

We want to keep the learning happening in Romano Village, but it is not realistic to think that anyone can wait three years for their salary with no likely changes on the immediate horizon. Most projects that provide teacher salaries do it through a “foster child” type initiative. What should we do?

Help us solve this dilemma, we need your input!

We will be asking you for feedback on our facebook poll. You can also feel free to contact us at info@tamaraneh.org or to tweet us an idea @Tamaraneh.

The container has arrived!. We just received confirmation that the container, which left Edmonton a couple of months ago, has safely arrived in Sierra Leone. (Please click here to read the original story)

_________

Dear Wendy and Marie,

We are very happy to tell you that the container landed in Freetown on the 28th August, 2011 just as you informed me in your last email. Thank you.

On behalf of my personal behalf and members of the school committee, I want to thank you very much for your kind gesture and we hope that our relationship will grow from strength to strength.

We were granted duty free by the Government of the Republic of Sierra Leone, for which we were very grateful.

Thank you.

Regards,

Abdul Salaam, Container Coordinator
__________

Once again, we would like to thank the Emmanuel Foundation for their help with coordinating and supporting the shipment of donations from Edmonton to Romano Village.

We are delighted and honoured to note that one of our board members was was one of two recipients of the inaugural CTV Edmonton Heritage Festival Citizen of the Year.

The award is presented to someone who has contributed towards multiculturalism, shows dedication to the community and is of assistance to immigrants - all of which Issa Kamara, through his local organization Sinkunia, does in his work to help emerging African community youth and families. Even being considered for the award is a wonderful honour so please join us in congratulating Issa and his achievements. We would also like to congratulate Issa’s co-recipient, Amson Saintime, who is the Executive Director of the Arbre de Vie Fine-Arts World Fellowship.

For our supporters not familiar with the annual Heritage Festival in Edmonton, please have a look at this video for a bit of background— the organizers actually talk about the Citizen of the Year award at the 3:40 mark of the clip.

On Saturday, June 18th, three Tamaraneh Society board members participated in Edmonton’s first Africa Connect event, a city wide initiative to connect people doing work in Africa or promoting African heritage, culture and businesses to showcase their work in one place. Held in the Expo building at Northlands, it was a huge success with over 100 booths, 50 music and dance performances, an afternoon full of informative workshops, and more than 3000 people in attendance. Our Tamaraneh booth was busy all day and we won new volunteers and sympathizers to add to our mailing list from this event. It was exciting to be with all the other organizations and to talk with the crowd as they interacted and enjoyed the entertainment. Congratulations are in order for the City of Edmonton and especially for Project Manager Jennifer Freake who did a fabulous job organizing this event. Hopefully this is just the beginning of many more!