THANK YOU

Summer Skills Workshop 2019

By Standing Voice

August 28^th, 2019

The Umoja Training Centre has always been a place to learn and grow.

Situated on the island of Ukerewe, deep in the heart of Tanzania's Lake Victoria, the Umoja Training Centre provides a second chance for so many people with albinism and their families. Many of its users were locked out of education in childhood, or denied proper opportunities for education and employment as adults. All have felt the brunt of rejection: ostracised by others; stigmatised because of a highly visible but fatally misunderstood genetic condition; deprived of their right to a safe and prosperous future.

After years of speaking to some of Ukerewe’s most vulnerable residents, we built the Umoja Training Centre to meet their training aspirations and income-generation needs, and provide a platform for wider community integration to help fight stigma over the long term.

Since its formal opening three years ago, the centre has gone on to achieve incredible things. It’s now a hub of activity for a range of training groups, whose members (with and without albinism) meet regularly to hone their skills and create a portfolio of products in a range of disciplines.

Although they train year-round, the groups meet for their largest and most intensive annual training exercise at the Summer Skills Workshop: a fortnight-long programme of classes, led by a coalition of international and local experts across a number of fields.

The Summer Skills Workshop returned this year for its third edition. Over a period of three weeks, 146 participants (including Ukerewe regulars and some visitors from mainland Mwanza) were trained across nine disciplines. To discover more about each workshop, you can follow the links below

The Hadithi Group (Storytelling & Performance)

The Tanzania Albinism Collective (Music)

The Umoja Photographers (Photography)

The Upendo Printers (Printing / Batik)

The Tunajitambua Tailors (Tailoring)

The Undaji Club (Arts & Crafts)

The Young Reporters (Radio)

English Lessons

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

We want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who helped to make the 2019 Summer Skills Workshop such a resounding success: our volunteers from across Tanzania and Europe; our wonderful translators Yohanna, Ramadhan and Valeria; and of course, our talented and dedicated trainees, without whom none of this would be possible.

Special thanks go to Tess Ballis and her family—and the entire Vision for Tomorrow Foundation—who once again made our dreams for this summer a reality with their unwavering support for the Summer Skills Workshop.

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, Jim Fisher and Sarah Bancroft, who pushed the youth of Ukerewe to rediscover their world through a lens; to Kate Uzzell and Lillian Mosha, 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 helped so many people with albinism and their friends to continue an exciting educational journey. Thank you to Kate Winter, Inbal Leitner and 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 Jacob Pakiel 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, William Mseti, Jacqueline Mtoi, John Fungwa and Ayoub Kajanja, our fearless advocates and performers who ignited a trail of positive engagement across the island of Ukerewe. Thank you to Molly Wheeler and Andrea Zvadova, who supported all the workshops and field visits with boundless energy. Our gratitude also goes to our partner Under the Same Sun, who connected our workshops with some talented new participants this year.

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 2020. For more information, please send an email to info@standingvoice.org.