THANK YOU

Harry Freeland reflects on the 2018 Summer Skills Workshop

By Standing Voice

August 17^th, 2018

Standing Voice has worked on Ukerewe Island for more than a decade.

Deep in the heart of Tanzania’s Lake Victoria, the island is in many ways the birthplace of our organisation: the location for much of my documentary, In the Shadow of the Sun, and a hub for Standing Voice's frontline services in Skin Cancer Prevention, Vision Care, and Education.

Perhaps more than anywhere else in Tanzania, or Africa, Ukerewe has been the target of sensationalist press around this issue: mystified by the media as a ‘sanctuary’ for people with albinism, a safe haven away from the discrimination of the mainland, where security can be found in numbers.

The reality is that Ukerewe has a deep and long history of discrimination against people with albinism. When I first arrived in 2006 I found unfathomable stigma: people abused and abandoned by their families, locked out of employment, dying of skin cancer. Some were forced to eat away from others, with separate bowls and utensils.

To bridge this divide and build a platform for reintegration, Standing Voice established the Umoja Training Centre in 2016: a community training facility providing skills development and economic enrichment to people with albinism and their friends, families, and wider community members on Ukerewe; a second chance for so many people with albinism who lost out on education in childhood.

In 2017, Standing Voice launched the Summer Skills Workshop: an integrated training programme, based at the Umoja Training Centre, helping the community to develop skills and pursue income-generating opportunities and pathways of professional development. We brought together renowned artists, actors, researchers, broadcasters, photographers, tailors and musicians, and connected these professionals to people with albinism and their peers on Ukerewe.

This year, thanks to the extraordinary efforts of so many volunteers and supporters, the Summer Skills Workshop returned: bigger, better, more radical than ever.

Over a period of two weeks, 85 participants—most from Ukerewe Island, but some from mainland Mwanza—were trained across eight workshop disciplines. To read about each, you can follow the links below, or click the boxes in our newsletter:

The Hadithi Group (Storytelling & Performance)

The Umoja Photographers (Photography)

The Tunajitambua Tailors (Tailoring)

The Undaji Club (Arts & Crafts)

The Upendo Printers (Printing)

The Young Reporters (Radio)

Upendo wa Mama (Batik)

English Lessons

The works these groups have created—bags, dresses, prints, paintings—will eventually be available for sale through the Standing Voice website and all proceeds will go back to these community groups so they can continue growing.

The centre will train thousands of people in the years ahead, arming this community with the tools to determine its own future.

I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who helped to make the 2018 Summer Skills Workshop such a resounding success: our volunteers from across Tanzania, Europe and the US; our wonderful translators Yohanna, Sophia and Zipporah; the Standing Voice teams, in Tanzania and the UK; and of course, the people of Ukerewe, without whom none of this would be possible.

We owe an enormous debt of gratitude to our volunteer trainers: people from all over the world who sacrificed their time, talent and money to join us in Tanzania because they believe in our work and share our message. Thank you to Brian Benson and Ebrahim Mirmalek, who pushed the youth of Ukerewe to rediscover their world through a lens; to Kate Uzzell and Mary Makinda, whose tailoring class became a platform not only to create, but also to claim agency; and to Sarah Bancroft and Molly Hardy, our English instructors who sparked the onset of a long educational journey for so many people with albinism and their friends. Thank you to Annie-Marie Akussah, whose artistic collaborations forged a space of healing; and to Morange John, who helped Ukerewe’s Young Reporters to find their voice. Thank you to Alex Booker, who enabled our beneficiaries to reflect and reimagine their world through woodcut printing; and to Rose Msonge and Zuwena Brown, trauma survivors and mothers of children with albinism themselves, whose leadership of the batik workshop sent a message far transcending the practice of wax-resist dyeing. Thank you to John Sagatti, Sixmond Mdeka, Josephat Torner, and William Mseti, our fearless advocates and performers who ignited a trail of positive engagement across the island of Ukerewe.

These workshops were preceded by an intensive period of renovation at the Umoja Training Centre. UK-based designer-fabricator Simon Sawyer worked with Alex Booker and local carpenter Lusato Mkeka to renovate the centre’s community library, now fit to accommodate thousands of books across its handcrafted and lovingly made shelves. Here and elsewhere across the site, celebrated artist Camille Walala and her long-time creative director Julia Jomaa brought their unmistakable visual signature, injecting the centre’s various spaces with their trademark burst of colour. The library, radio suite, water tanks and external façades all now boast a backdrop of electrifying design. Following the specialist support of these renovators—and the indomitable energy of Sabine Zetteler, Jess Meyer, India Ayles, Kevin Arulrajah, and all of our friends at Zetteler—the Umoja Training Centre can now give people with albinism and their peers the opportunity to build skills and knowledge in a facility that evokes their own philosophy of creativity and joy.

Of course, none of this would have happened without the incredible strength of our supporters. Our heartfelt thanks go to Simon Sawyer, Anthony Leyton, Kevin Arulrajah, and Nick and India Ayles, who ran the Hackney Half Marathon in May in support of Standing Voice; and to Camille Walala and Julia Jomaa, whose special-edition prints were met with a rapturous reception when sold in a dedicated fundraiser. Thank you also to Klaus Scholler, Sylvia Vetta (of Kennington Overseas Aid), the Evan Cornish Foundation, and St Martin in the Fields, who all made indispensable contributions to the Summer Skills Workshop. Thank you to Under the Same Sun, who so generously connected its beneficiaries to our event. Finally, thank you to Tess Ballis and her family—and the entire Vision for Tomorrow Foundation—whose astonishing online campaign made our dreams for this summer a reality.

Photos by Brian Benson, Sabine Zetteler, Harry Freeland, Sam Clarke, Ebrahim Mirmalek

If you know someone with a skill to share—or would just like to help make positive changes in the lives of people with albinism and their families—apply for the Summer Skills Workshop 2019. For more information, please contact us on info@standingvoice.org.