Our Work
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“Any Human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so”
Doris Lessing
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OUR WORK
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ANNO'S AFRICA core team comprises a small group of Europe based creative professionals (artists, writers, musicians) who run the charity and give of their skills voluntarily alongside their normal paid careers. This core team is supplemented by a larger group of occasional, or one off master-class trainers, who constantly feed in fresh skills and ideas according to the needs of our programmes and their own availability.
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None of our European teaching staff is paid a salary for their work. Only basic charity cost, cheapest economy flights and subsistence-based communal living are paid for by the charity, to ensure that every penny we raise works as hard as it can for the children.
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Each of our projects is run in collaboration with existing African charities, shelters, orphanages or non-formal schools, which receive little or no Government support, to maximise our access to the children who need us most.
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Our small team works alongside a much larger group of locally recruited African artist/trainers and trainees, who do receive payment for their work, and who are able to update and expand their own skills as they teach, and continue running our programmes when the visiting trainers have left.
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The African trainers then go on to train their peers as new teachers and in this way it is hoped that the reach of ANNO'S AFRICA'S programmes will grow and grow, offering a sustainable arts education to ever greater numbers of children.
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Art group sketching expedition to the animal orphanage, with Emma, Babu, Hussein, Joni and Edgar.
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Each year ANNO'S AFRICA provides a three month supplementary arts education to teach children practical craft skills, which not only offer them the chance to be children – to paint and use clay, to sing, dance and stilt walk – but which also improves their chances of earning a living.
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Kadez heading a warm-up session with the drama group at Valley View School, Mathare.
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The workshops that Anno’s Africa provide offer many benefits for the children who participate in the project.
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To teach them practical crafts which will greatly
enhance their chances of paid work in the future.
(Particularly talented children will go on to
Advanced Anno’s Africa workshops and
we will endeavour to help them find work through
these newfound skills.)
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Theate Studies Group - mask making.
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To exercise their basic human right to enjoy their
childhood through creative play and the exploration
of their artistic talents and physical skills.
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Nathan teaching tight rope.
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To explore their individual human potential and
creativity in a much broader sense; who they are,
what they think and believe, what they want for
their futures. This raising of their self awaremess
and what they are capable of achieving which will
impact on and enhance every aspect of their lives,
giving them the confidence and self esteem
to make changes and fight for a better future.
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Billy & Lulu performing with the music class at St John's, Majengo.
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Dance warm-up with Kebaye in Kibera.
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Anna's ballet class
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Children in the slums lack self confidence and have little understanding of their inner potential. They can tend to think that they need someone else to tell them what to do and how to do it... Therefore a huge priority of our work is directed towards the personal developement of the children into individuals who know how to draw on and nurture their imagination and inner potential and creativity so that they can become young adults who can develop their own thoughts and beliefs and know how to be self-starting, ingenious and entrepreneurial.
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Final open day and show at St John's, Majengo.
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However, is also a brutal reality that a significant proportion of the children we work with will not live to adulthood, as the child mortality rate is so very high, but Anno’s Africa provides these children with at least some shot at a ‘childhood’ and believes that it is the quality of life that counts, not the quantity. We want these children to have had fun on the journey, however short ....
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One such child was Victor Otieno who died from Malaria six weeks
after completing the art course in 2007. He was a hugely talented student. After the funeral his granny sent this message to ANNO'S AFRICA.
“Thank you. They were the happiest weeks of Victor’s life. At least he knew he was an artist before he died”
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It is for children like Victor that ANNO'S AFRICA really matters...
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OUR WORK TO DATE
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In 2007 Anno’s Africa ran a pilot project at St John’s charity school in the Majengo slum in Nairobi. We worked there for two months on a programme plan that we felt would best benefit as many as children as possible. About 150 kids from the school participated in a three day a week project with workshops in five major disciplines: Art Music Dance Drama and Circus skills (See Arts programmes link for details) .
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Mural painting at St John's.
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Acrobatics at St John's.
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We also held some “creative play” workshops at The Nest orphanage just outside the city on the edge of the Limuru tea plantations.
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Bee, Marie and Karen at The Nest.
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We had to postpone the Nairobi spring 2008 project in Nairobi as a result of the post election violence so we decided instead to go to Cape Town and hold an Easter holiday programme for some Aids orphans and other vulnerable children in the Nyanga township. This programme was funded from the Jane Birkin concert at the Round House and her donation from Hermes for her “Birkin Bag”. We went to South Africa at the invitation of ASAP – African Solutions to African Problems, a fellow charity who look after many thousands of needy children throughout the southern part of the country.
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Cape Town parade and show with Shane as MC.
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Later in 2008 we were finable able to return to Nairobi again and have just completed a second series of arts workshops this year which ran from mid October until Christmas 2008 which included two new schools, one in Mathare and the other in Kibera. These are the two slums which had been hit hardest by the inter-factional conflicts and are having to deal now with the added hardships of rising food costs, school closures and still the underlying fear of the violence erupting once again
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View from Valley View School.
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Mask making at St John's.
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Kenyan trainers: Irush, Krysteen and Sam.
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During the 2008 programme we worked with about 500 children from the three schools in Majengo, Mathare and Kibera.
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Natalia teaching silks to trainers.
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Still Life class.
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Advanced Art teachers, Steve & Francesca, in Kibera.
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FUTURE PLANS
KENYA
In October and November 2009 we ran the third year of workshops at St Johns and the second year for Mathare. Please go to Bee’s blog to read detailed reports... and for information about future programmes in Kenya, please go to the News and Events page.
Projects in other countries.
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We will investigate setting up programmes in Port Elizabeth, South Africa in conjunction with Shane Botha, a youth worker with a street kids programme who was a music/dance trainer for Anno’s Africa Cape Town project.
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Shane Botha on the oil drums
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We are in discussions about starting projects with Street children in Ethiopia for the thousands of orphans and vulnerable children living on the streets of Addis Ababa .... .
We also are planning on starting up art workshops in Southern Sudan at the school that has been built by Valentino ( subject of the David Eggars book “What is the What”) who has returned to his home town of Mariel Bei and funded the new secondary school which should be completed this year.. It will start with just a visual arts programme and will be funded from the One Fine Day Foundation.
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We are visiting two orphanages in Northern Uganda where we have established connections, with a view to starting up a “returning child soldiers” programme. This project will concentrate on visual arts, circus and movement psychotherapy and then expand to include drama and music when it is established,
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