They can create simple stave patterns and rhythms for one another to play and are getting quicker and quicker when reading music. We're really pleased with their progress and hope those following the Facebook and Twitter updates are impressed with each individual child's music reading skills. They can also sing a song in English about the rhythms and the family of different notes so they can tell you about Father Crotchet, the Quaver Twins and Mother Minim – all of which means we're having fun in English along the way!"
Update from Stave House in the Sahara! For the last two weeks in October, one of our partner organisations, Olive Branch Arts, are in the Camps to run their new photography and music training programme ‘Sand and Vision’. They are working in Smara and aim to build the storytelling and creative composition skills of young participants so they can tell their stories in new ways. You can find out more information about their work here. One of their team, Matt King Smith, is a musician and he is gathering the sounds, music and voices of Saharawis of all ages and musical abilities to create some tracks documenting the team's time in the Camps. We are lucky to have Matt working with both our Stave House in the Sahara groups on two different days of workshops. This week, Matt led our young people through a series of rhythm and soundscape exercises and will return next week to record some of the sounds and music the young people can make with their voices and bodies and the instruments we have in our classroom. Take a look at the videos below to see what they got up to. Olive Branch Arts' Creative Director (Dramatherapy), Becky Finlay Hall, brought us some letters from children in a school in London and we will be writing some responses to them as soon as we can. The team also brought us some gifts of classroom resources so we are incredibly grateful to Olive Branch Arts for all their support and wish them loads of luck with their project - very much looking forward to seeing and hearing the results!
Meanwhile, Beccy Allen has continued to teach English to the children on a daily basis. Their activities this week involve learning through action and using circle time to ask each other questions and slowly build to be able to talk about themselves and other people in more and more detail. We hope you like watching a little of what we do in action.  Beccy Allen, Stave House in the Sahara's volunteer English teacher, shares with us some thoughts about her experience teaching young Saharawi children so far... (versión en español más abajo) "So, after the first three weeks of English teaching as part of Stave House in the Sahara, I can safely say that I am excited about the children's learning. These young people have opened my eyes wider than ever to how hungry young minds can be for education and creativity. They love the games we play and are eager to answer and are getting better and better at listening to one another. They are making leaps in what they can remember and say and are becoming thoughtful in the way they support others who maybe struggle with something we working on at any given time. Working with them on English every day is brilliant as you can see the progress made in a week. After the long summer break they were at first struggling to recall a lot of what they had learned last year. After three weeks of immersion for an hour at a time, working with a teacher who can only help them learn through the target language itself alongside gesture, we have developed our own ways of communicating and understanding one another and everything from last year is coming flooding back to them. They are becoming fearless in taking on board new vocabulary rather than looking to someone to translate the words for them. Our classes switch between moments of calm and moments of playful energy. The children are inquisitive and bold and don't shy away from answering even when they are unsure. We focus on listening to my voice and all the strange and wonderful new sounds of the English words they are learning. They repeat over and over but also learn to question each other, learning to talk about themselves and others. We listen to English music and look at photos of England, many aspects of which are totally alien to them. We laugh at the way I pronounce their names but that helps them know that I am learning just as they are. Bring on the next couple of months!" Original article in Spanish by Poemario por un Sahara Libre.  Morocco continues to appropriate Saharawi cultural symbols and elements in order to dilute Western Sahara into Morocco. The use of the Saharawi dress (melhfa and darraa) by Moroccan settlers is one of the many ways in which certain Saharawi cultural references are assumed as their own. This is how they are trying to assimilate as Moroccan many Saharawi characters and tales, such as in the case of the Shertat tales. They also try to seize historical Saharawi characters and, now, even the Hassanya language. It is a very dangerous work of cultural sabotage carried out by the Moroccan authorities, and that tries to distort the conflict by exercising a work of "cultural genocide".
"The Little Prince" translated into the Arabic dialect Hassaniya dialect of Western Sahara EFE, 31st MAY, 2017 The famous work of Antoine de Saint-Exupery "The Little Prince" has been translated into the Arabic dialect Hassaniya, spoken in Western Sahara and Mauritania. This is a Moroccan initiative, jointly carried out by the National Human Rights Council (CNDH), the Saint-Exupery Foundation and the Fosbucra Foundation, which promotes development projects in the part of the Sahara administered by Morocco, according to the CNDH today a statement. The famous Saint-Exupery, one of the most translated books in the world (with 300 versions) will be distributed next week free of charge in Moroccan schools in all the Saharawi regions where Hassanya is spoken, including the Tarfaya region, outside the country of Western Sahara. In fact, the distribution has been announced to coincide with the 90th anniversary of the voyage that Saint-Exupery made to Tarfaya (then called Cape Juby), where he resided for a few months as a delegate of the airline Aéropostale. Original article in Spanish by Poemario por un Sahara Libre. Western Sahara seminar in Pretoria addresses crucial issues on the future of Africa's last colony5/19/2017   We are so thrilled to announce that London's exclusive dance studio Inspiration 2 Dance has just announced that they'll be dedicating their upcoming fundraiser SUMMER SIZZLE Dance & BBQ Party 2017 next June 24 in London to Sandblast. THANK YOU!! Our connection with Inspiration 2 Dance comes from our Founding Director Danielle Smith, who's really passionate about dancing and has had a close relationship with the school since late 2015. Sandblast has decided to pledge all funds raised through the SUMMER SIZZLE Dance to the music and English education project Stave House in the Sahara, which has just finished their very successful second stage with over 25 children passing their certified Stave House Level 1 Music Awards. Congratulations! During its third stage (Sep 2017-May 2018), Sandblast will be the main sponsor of the project, so we need all the help we can get to make it a reality! For that, we've just set up a new JustGiving fundraising campaign. Check it out!   Our partner project Stave House in the Sahara has just finished its second stage with a fabulous End Of Year Party in which the children have performed a few songs and had some sweet treats to celebrate a very successful year. Over 25 students have recently passed their Stave House Level 1 Music Awards, which will be fully certified by the London College of Music (University of West London) through Stave House. Congratulations!! How exciting! Sandblast is now in conversation with Stave House in the Sahara to provide sponsorship for their third stage, which will begin in September 2017. Stay tuned for updates! In the remote desert of southwest Algeria, a young Sahrawi refugee is filling discarded bottles with sand to build shelters that better withstand the harsh climate. Original text by Russell Fraser published on UNHCR website on January 11  TINDOUF, Algeria – With a master’s degree in energy efficiency, Sahrawi refugee Tateh Lehbib Breica had originally planned to build an energy efficient home in the desert, using discarded bottles for a roof garden. But as the roof’s circular form presented construction challenges, the 27-year-old found himself left with numerous bottles which were no longer good for their intended purpose – growing plant seedlings. “I asked myself ‘What can I do with these?’” says Breica, who was born and raised in Awserd refugee camp, attended university in Algiers under a DAFI scholarship, and later studied for his master’s at a Spanish university. WATCH VIDEO ABOUT PROJECT HERE |
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