The new year

In typical African fashion we are bit late with our first blog of the new year. It's our goal to get one out each month.....I am in awe of people who manage to write one everyday!
Ghana has a new president, John Atta Mills, and America has a new president, Barack Obama. Last year when President Bush came to Ghana, I asked a Ghanaian why he thought that he had come and the Ghanaian said, "I think that he's selling mosquito nets." Let's hope that when President Obama visits the expectations are higher.

The Aba House kids are participating in One World-Many Papers, an exhibit being assembled in Tawain and traveling around the world until the end of 2010. It will open at the Distillary Gallery in Boston, MA USA on April 3,2009.
The exhibit is a map of the world made up of handmade paper from 42 countries. The Aba House kids were asks to represent Ghana and are the only children in the exhibit. As always, we are very proud of them.

Aba will participate in a conference, also to be held in Boston, entitled "International Opportunities in the Arts" to take place April 3-5,2009.

We have put together a teachers kit ( grades 1-3) that contains everything needed to teach a unit on Ghana. The feedback from teachers using them has been positive. Among other things the kit contains a DVD of various craftspeople working in Ghana and a DVD of Ghanaian music. If interested, contact us and we'll send more information.

For a fun diversion go to http://www.adinkragame.com/ and pass the cursor over the symbols.
And if you want to buy adinkra stamps, we'd be happy to sell them to you.

As always, we will be working with the Aba House children this coming summer and have several volunteers to teach papermaking, bookbinding and other creative skills. We are looking for a volunteer to teach computer skills. Aba House has 6 donated computers and many, many children who'd like to learn how to use them. Know any geeks who'd like to summer in an African fishing village?

And we'll end with a poem by GOETHE:

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genious, power and magic in it.
Begin it now.



aba@culturalcollaborative.org

Fundraising

Not always the most fun part of the job, it's necessary. We did have fun and great success at one of our fundraisers. Go to www.rainydaymagazine.com and find the archives for May 25.

On a Friday in June , the shop called Ten Thousand Villages in Brookline, MA made us their non-profit de jour and donated 15% of sales to us during a 4 hour period in the afternoon.

We have also had in kind donations of a camera, 2 computers, a printer and household items.
We might just get everything to Ghana because our volunteers are each taking a suitcase for us.

We've also had a solar cooker donated and will use it this summer to cook the sugarcane leaves for the bookmaking. Reports on that will be in our next newsletter.