Archive for Uncategorized
Space to play, time to learn
The bags finally arrived! There was another race out to the airport in a borrowed car on Saturday morning, past tracts of shacks and drying grasses, through tight, crumbling neighbourhoods and flashing by huge Chinese construction projects.
It took a bit of hunting to track down the bags, which I found in a room at the [...]
Doné, doné!=bit by bit
It has been incredible to be back here. Sitting out at the Workshop as the sun sets and the dust sinks slowly to the cooling earth is beautiful. The blackboard has the day’s kindergarden lesson chalked on it and the slates have been cleaned and stacked. Kids appear out of the trees on their way [...]
Bamako and Baggage
I arrived in Bamako last Sunday. I was only three hours late and I stumbled happily into the dark heat of a Malian night, pen ready for the forms they give you in a room without a biro in sight… the queues for a pen I could tell you about!
The other passengers drained away and [...]
Happy New Year to all our supporters
Hope you all had a restful yuletide and have hit the 2010 ground running! The African workshop sure have!
It’s that time of year again to board that flight with bags of goodies for the brilliant community of Yiri Madjos in Bamako. Ben is taking a solo trip this year to see how the project is [...]
Video live on YouTube!
At last you can see the what we are doing in Bamako. I’m pleased to announce that there is a short video about the African Workshop on Youtube.
This was shot last February when we were over there to give you a sense of where the money goes and how the project works. Let me know [...]
Folk Against Fascism
The African Workshop is proud to announce its support for a fantastic new organisation – Folk Against Fascism.
FAF has been set up to counter the insidious move by the BNP to appropriate British folk music. As FAF put it on their great new website: “The BNP’s Activists and Organisers Handbook encourages its members to [...]
Sign up & earn us money!
The African Workshop is now signed up for a great online fundraising site.
Every time to request catalogues on buy online through this site, the African Workshop makes money!
Visit the site and get clicking – it’s an easy way to us to raise cash that will go direct to Mali….
There are over 600 companies signed up [...]
Be a regular giver – Standing orders
It is now much easier if you’d like to become a regular donor to the African Workshop.
Regular donations make a massive difference to what we can achieve. I’m aiming to cover all our monthly outgoings in this way so all new fundraising efforts can go straight into the pot to buy our piece of land [...]
New Mali project photos!
The first batch of pictures from the latest trip to Bamako are up now.
Click on the ‘Photos’ tab and open the top gallery called 2009 Trip.
I hope the pictures capture a bit of the atmosphere over there – there’s more to follow…
Enjoy,
Ben
Mali – Kids in school
While we were in Bamako we asked about school in Yiri Madgos, the area where the Workshop is. Some of the kids do go to school, but for others it is too expensive.
A month in school costs 2,000cfa, which works out about £3. The price shocked me – I’d expected it to be much higher. [...]