The second Wilberforce Lecture of 2008 will be delivered at Holy Trinity church on Friday 21st November 2008 at 5.30pm by the Foreign Secretary, Rt. Hon David Milliband M.P..

His subject will be “Russia in a changing world”.

At the same event the Wilberforce Medal for 2008 will be awarded posthumously to Anna Politkovskaya, the campaigning journalist of the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, who was assassinated in the lift of her Moscow apartment building two years ago.

From the information I have and especially following the recent victory in the U.S. presidential elections of President-Elect Obama, the content will now focus much more on the changing world than Russia and so may prove very interesting.

Unfortunately, the “security” demands of the Foreign Office are preventing us from widely advertising this event until a few days before it takes place, not until next week in fact and clearly we do not want to present Mr. Milliband with an empty church, so if you are at all interested I do urge you to obtain a ticket from the City Hall Box Office. These are available now to those who ask, though you do have to give your name and address. Apologies for these complications but I’m afraid the details of the arrangements are not under the control of the Trustees.

You may also receive a Global e-mail about this event but probably not until the middle of next week.

Staff from Winifred Holtby Secondary, Dorchester Primary, Sutton Park Primary and St Richard’s Primary were funded through the DfID British Council Global Schools Partnerships to develop partnerships with Albert Academy, Cathedral Primary, Conforti Community Primary and Children in Crisis Primary.

The partnerships have been developed by journalist Matt Stephenson, who first visited Freetown when working in collaboration with Hull based media collective Cafesociety.org.

“After listening to children and young people in Freetown and Hull, in getting the opportunity to experience something of their lives, I felt that developing educational links was possibly the most sustainable way of bringing long-term benefits to children in both cities. There is a huge amount that we can all learn from each other.” explained Matt.

It was an event-filled visit: a tropical storm on the ferry from Lunghi airport provided the visitors with an exciting introduction to life in Sierra Leone.

Other highlights included an appearance and feature about the visit on national TV news, meeting the Minister of Education, a trip up-country to Makeni, a visit to church, a beach barbecue and football at Kent, singing Krio hymns in the poda-poda, shopping at the Big Market and much more.

But it was the school visits which will make the most lasting impressions. All of the UK guests were moved an inspired by meeting the staff and teachers in their partner schools. “We had the most amazing welcome everywhere we went.” explained Dorchester Primary head-teacher Sue Liddle. “There were gifts, dancing and many moments when we got to speak to pupils and even visit their homes. But I think the most striking thing was the difficult conditions that everyone has to endure - derelict buildings, lack of power, no resources or books… it makes you wonder how people manage to teach or learn, and also makes you realise how much we have in the UK.”

This visit to Freetown is just the first stage of a newly developing programme of Hull schools linking with partners in Freetown. A visit to Hull by the freetown partners will take place next March, and following that another seven or eight schools in Hull are hoping to join the programme.

For more information email: matt@hullman.karoo.co.uk

Staff and head teachers from Winifred Holtby Secondary, Sutton Park Primary, Dorchester Primary and St Richard’s Primary in Hull will be visiting Albert Academy Secondary, Conforti Community Aid Primary, Cathedral Primary and Children in Crisis Primary schools in Freetown on October 22, 2008.

The partnership project grew out of work initiated by Freetown Society members Matt Stephenson and Jon Robson during their trip to Freetown in March 2007.

Matt and Jon visited a number of schools in Freetown and were keen to develop links that would enable young people in both cities to learn more about each other’s lives:

“The conflict and poverty in Sierra Leone mean that the people often feel isolated and overlooked,” said Matt, “yet there is a very rich and vibrant culture there and a great deal that people in Hull can learn from the experience of Salonians.

“Similarly, Hull - and particularly the estates like Bransholme where three of our partner schools are based - is an isolated city that has had its own share of social challenges.

“We really hope that this new partnership will enable the schools to reach out into the wider world, learn about other cultures and make real, lasting relationships that will benefit children’s learning both in Hull and in Freetown.”

We’ll keep you up to date with the partnerships and how they progress, through regular postings on the Freetown Society’s blog and news pages.

For more information about this work contact Matt Stephenson: matt@hullman.karoo.co.uk

The Mayor of Freetown, Cllr Herbert George Williams, will visit Hull for Hull’s 2nd annual Freetown Day celebrations.

Mayor Williams is particularly keen to meet and speak to Members of the Freetown Society, and all members are therefore invited to attend an open meeting in the Live Art Space at the Ferens Art Gallery on Sunday 26th October at 12.30pm. The meeting is being held at that location so that Members also have the chance to view the Freedom Trail Exhibition and the Greetings! Wilberforce Women exhibition that will be on display.

For further information please contact Richard Skog on (01482) 613154

Hull City Council has been shortlisted for 2008’s LGY&H ‘Making the Difference’ Awards in the ‘Looking Beyond our Shores’ category for Hull’s inaugural Freetown Day in 2007. The winner will be announced at an award ceremony in Wakefield on 18th November 2008.

October 25th (the anniversary of the twinning link) was designated as Freetown Day as part of the Wilberforce 2007 commemorations. Freetown Day 2007 encompassed many of the diverse elements of international linking, and acted as a catalyst for the development of innovative projects for the benefit of both cities. There were six individual projects that underpinned Freetown Day 2007 - including academic, local government, community, cultural, faith and practical elements that each exemplify the strength and diversity of the link. Partners such as the Council, the Freetown Society, Freedom Trail, Greetings! Wilberforce Women and the University of Chester combined to deliver the series of events.

The shortlisting follows the success of the Sierra Leone National Fire Force project which won 1st place in the 2007 awards:

http://www.lgyh.gov.uk/EnhancingLocalGovernments/Hull+Sierra+Leone.htm

As the 1st anniversary of the departure of the Freedom Trail draws ever close 2 of the Freedom Trail photographers have mounted an exhibition of their work at the Ferens Art Gallery.

Their work is a collection of over 60 photographs out of the 8000 that were shot during the expedition. All of the prints are available to purchase for £20 after the exhibition is over and you can reserve yours by visiting the gallery and filling in the form that is in the Live Arts room there.

Every day now, without fail, I think about those women. As I open the cupboard door in my kitchen to shelves of choices for breakfast, I wonder what they are doing and how they are coping. I know that a bag of rice in Freetown is now a fiver more (an average week’s wages) and bread is best bought at night when it’s not so fresh, but cheaper.

I flick on my computer, in my own home with running water, a hot shower and a flush toilet, and my only strain this particular morning is to find the right words for the captions to accompany the photographs of those women who are on my mind.

How can I, from the vantage point of my rich and comfortable life, convey the desperation and pain they feel, or even their joy and laughter that humble me so. I check my emails and it’s a ‘thought for the day’ from Cecilia, reminding me that God loves me and all will be well. Cecilia, an orphan with no home of her own and whose job as a switchboard operator is ending soon, is reassuring me that life will be kind and I should be strong.

Rebecca, a new mother of month-old Raymond calls me from a borrowed mobile and in jazzy Krio says ‘’ello, ow de morning?’’ If I close my eyes I can still feel Raymond’s tiny hand clasped round my little finger, hear the dogs barking in the village, feel the sweat slide down my skin in a house with no air, see the cockroach scuttle for the corner, and hear the clang of pots as Rebecca cooks, cleans and sees to the whole family, including her ill father and aunts. Her husband has been unemployed three years. ‘’God will provide!’’ she laughs. I try not to dwell on the fact that one in four children dies before the age of five.

It’s been over three weeks since my second visit to Sierra Leone. Last year, on behalf of Wilberforce Women, I went out to deliver basic photography skills workshops to a host of women who have since formed themselves into a women’s photography group and are helping to strengthen the links between our twin cities. Julie, Francess and Cecilia visited Hull last October for further photography skills, including a day at the BBC, and Francess spent a couple of days with me at Christmas (she still talks about her first trip to the cinema, eating popcorn and how we buy even our pet dogs presents).

On Christmas Eve, I sat with Francess in the waiting room at Hull’s Paragon Station as she prepared to return home. I bought a copy of The Independent which carried a front page report of Sierra Leone as the toughest place for a child to be born into and we read it together. Francess shook her head, ‘’it’s true,’’ she said, ‘’it’s all true.’’ I’ll try to help was my feeble reply, knowing that whatever I write or photograph might move a reader for a minute but in no way would it change a country, or lives, for sadly the pen and the camera are not that mighty.

So in February 2008, in the year when I would turn 42 years of age, I returned to Sierra Leone where life expectancy for women is just 42. I lived with the women, documented their average day and tried to imagine what life was like in their shoes. I watched them cook and clean, I visited their ill-equipped hospitals where wonderful nurses are losing the will to work, the maternity hospital that is forced to wash and re-use disposable gloves despite the presence of HIV, the school where teachers worry about attacks on their female students, the offices where wages are a joke, and the markets where crime and pick-pocketing are rife.

But I could not imagine what it’s like for those women who, quite frankly, exist in a living hell. The women of the filth and disease-ridden slums and the women doped up and forced to beg for their food as the country’s one and only mental hospital is unable to provide meals. I cannot forget the daughter hidden away because a doctor told her mother her floppy joints and flattened face proved she was down syndrome and there’s nothing else to be done. Or Kadiatu, whose legs were severed by a youth wielding a machete and is reduced to begging for money and food. Or Iris (she wouldn’t dare give her real name) whose cheating husband is beating her stomach until she bleeds.

From my desk I email Gladys, who baked a carrot cake for me on her coal stove and led me up a stairwell where the family chicken was roosting in a cardboard box, and into a room with a soiled mattress and a worn dresser. From a drawer she pulled out fading photos of her mother, Adeline, once the daughter of a former president. Her mother looks happy, as glamorous as Diana Ross in her 1960s mini dress, about to qualify as a midwife and return to a Sierra Leone that is safe, educated, prosperous and where tourists lounge on white powdery beaches. But that was another era, before civil war and corruption smashed the country to pieces and bled it dry, and before Adeline succumbed to cancer, leaving her daughters and sons to cram into one floor of a house with peeling paint and broken mirrors.

Gladys replies joyfully. She doesn’t moan about the price of rice or the fact that the chicken has yet to lay an egg. She says she loves the green tea I gave her and is looking forward to working on the second Wilberforce Women photography project which is called ‘Mothers’. In fact, she cannot stop scribbling down her ideas. When are you coming back, she asks … how about this Christmas? I sip my own green tea and reach for my diary.

Congratulations to the soccer warriors of the land of gold and diamonds  who have brought pride to our nation. It is a competition in which the Leone Stars have lifted the green, white and blue national flag of Sierra Leone high with magnificient and dazzling soccer against the power-houses of Africa, Nigeria and South Africa. Underrated as unlikely to make it in this group which also includes Equatorial Guinea, Leone Stars proved the sceptics wrong by humiliating South Africa and after yesaterday’s victory, Nigeria could be Leone Stars’ next victim, if they are not over-awed by the reputation of the Super Eagles.
Now, the battle facing Leone Stars is to continue to be among the nine best second placed teams , which would definitely guaranteee them a place in the next stage of the series. A draw at the most in Nigeria against the already-qualified Super Eagles should ensure that .

Congratulations too  to Coach Abu Kanu, who has won the laurels where once famous names like Christian Cole and Jebboh Sherrington failed. Where those coaches were dismissed for poor performances by Leone Stars, the relatively unknown Coach Kanu has succeeded in hammering out a Leone Stars squad that Sierra Leoneans are proud of once again.

Sierra Leoneans should also be indebted to professional player, Mohamed Kallon, who enabled Leone Stars to play yesterday’s match by providing $ 45, 000 after the Sierra Leone Football Association( SLFA )  and the government failed to provide the needed support to the national team . Kallon’s gesture shows that there are still patritic citizens in the land. Though out of work himself ( No team yet to play fo, though that problem would soon be solved by one of the most talented footballers in the world  ), Kallon placed the national interest above his’. That was highly commendable.

The interaction between government ministers, key members of the British scientific community including the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the Met Office, the marine and fisheries agency, department for international development and Eco-Securities.

Captain Bob Tarrant Friday told journalists in Freetown that the seminar would be chaired by Dr. Hazell Shokellu Thompson from Birdlife International which would be held onboard the vessel because of its world class platform for climate and ecological research.

He said while in Sierra Leone they would be undertaking important survey work which could be of great benefit to future developments of the maritime economic prosperity of Sierra Leone.

“The visit of HMS ENDURANCE to Sierra Leone encompasses a number of roles for the ship including coastal surveying, training with the Sierra Leone navy and ministerial sea days to promote the importance of fishery protection,” he said.

Captain Tarrant hoped the West African seminar would provide an opportunity for the Royal Navy to create an enduring relationship with its West African colleagues and to promote environmental protection.

Immediately after the war, the country was in chaos with a large number of displaced people and refugees. The new government sent the majority of the children who had lost limbs or were blind to amputees or special schools. These had traditionally catered for all those considered to be outside main stream education.

Sierra Leone has recently made education free for all children by removing school fees. As a result the number of children going to school has tripled. The literacy rate is improving but is still low in comparison with many other African countries; adult literacy is less than 30 per cent, amongst the youth it is 38 per cent.

The majority of children dropped out of school during the war, so there are now primary schools full of children up to the age of 20 going to school again or for the first time.

The schools that were not destroyed are still in terrible conditions and the learning environment is hard. Many schools can not even afford benches or classroom chairs, leaving pupils to sit on concrete blocks or stand. In addition most teachers have not been trained properly; out of 25,000 teachers in Sierra Leone, more than 40 per cent have no qualifications or received any training. This makes it hard for them to deal with the large classes and few resources. Teachers’ salaries are £27 per month, which is not enough. Often they juggle teaching with a second or third job to make ends meet.

Although the majority of children in Sierra Leone now go to school, there is still a long way to go with the construction of schools destroyed by the war. Thousands of children today are still being denied an education because they have had a leg or arm missing, making their suffering worse.