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Go Ghana!

Send Jane and Anissa to Ghana, Africa with a group of Oakland University music students to spend time with the Dagara People of West Africa.

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Go Ghana!

Go Ghana!

Go Ghana!

Go Ghana!

Go Ghana!

Send Jane and Anissa to Ghana, Africa with a group of Oakland University music students to spend time with the Dagara People of West Africa.

Send Jane and Anissa to Ghana, Africa with a group of Oakland University music students to spend time with the Dagara People of West Africa.

Send Jane and Anissa to Ghana, Africa with a group of Oakland University music students to spend time with the Dagara People of West Africa.

Send Jane and Anissa to Ghana, Africa with a group of Oakland University music students to spend time with the Dagara People of West Africa.

Anissa Howard
Anissa Howard
Anissa Howard
Anissa Howard
1 Campaign |
Clarkston, United States
$725 USD 9 backers
6% of $11,000 Flexible Goal Flexible Goal

     Hello Everyone, we're going to Africa!

                                          

                                 

Indiegogo said we're supposed to introduce ourselves here so if you don't already know us, I am Anissa and my daughter is Jane.  Jane is 13 and in her final year at Upland Hills School.  I am the teacher of the 6-9 year olds at Upland Hills School. I continue to co-direct a very special Farmers' Market in my hometown that a friend and I founded in 2005.  Jane, the School, and the Market in triad create a story that points toward Ghana, Africa so please read on.....

(The reason this project is posted is because Jane and I both have the opportunity to travel to Ghana for a month this July 2014 with my teacher and a small group of music students from Oakland University. View PREZI on Ghana, Africa)


The Full Story:

Two things happened simultaneously when Jane and I first arrived at Upland Hills School nearly 10 years ago, both of which had their origins in Ghana, Africa.  

1.  I immediately met two Dagara people of West (Ghana) Africa, where the saying 'It takes a whole village to raise a child', originated. 

2.  I discovered the baskets that would give the farmers' market its footing. 

Sitting in our very own school theater watching and listening to Bernard Woma, Kofi, and Mark Stone play, I was captivated by the sounds of the African instruments, specifically the mbira kalimba nyunga nyunga (thumb piano).  Independently of this musical encounter I found the market baskets pictured below and at the time it seemed that something new was being set in motion....that is culminating now - a decade later, with this opportunity.  Full circle.

                    UPLAND HILLS SCHOOL ALL SCHOOL PICTURE

                 

During that first year of School Jane was 4 years old and in good hands in Holly's Group. That year a good friend and I had begun planning to create the first Clarkston Farmers' Market - a grassroots local market now approaching a 10th season in supporting area farmers', the Village of Clarkston, and the Michigan Growing Season. We knew then that we needed to find funding for the market to survive but it wasn't coming easily.  One day while driving on I-69 through the Michigan farmland from a class I was taking at the MSU I stopped by a local nursery and happened upon a large quantity of beautiful baskets.  

Bolga baskets.

 

The greenhouse owner just happened to be looking for a wholesale buyer and so the Clarkston Farmers' Market became their first wholesale customer - and the market gained some funding by way of the basket sales. This gave the market a spark of promise.  As the baskets came in, we sometimes found the names of the weavers printed on small pieces of leather attached with string to a basket.  We discovered that the baskets' journey from Africa to Clarkston had a rich and heartwarming story. So much so, that an East Lansing area artist wrote and illustrated the basket story as a children's book.  Gave us rights to publish if we choose...


We learned the baskets were hand woven in Ghana, Africa up in the Bolgatanga Region, by a women's cooperative intent on bettering their lives through sharing their weaving skills thus providing for their families. My own grandmother was a weaver and so I could appreciate the skill and effort it took to weave.

GHANA, AFRICA…where we're headed

          

The market sold hundreds of these baskets over the next couple of years.

                     

In 2009, the five-year mark for the market, in gratitude to this small African country and its people, I partnered the Farmers' Market with Bicycles for Humanity and Ghana Bikes and made the Market a collection site for over 400 disused bicycles from the Clarkston area. With permission of course, we used this charming little Australian-based video (below) to communicate to our community, the process of moving the bikes from one continent to another.

Our 2009 bicycle collection Container in Downtown Clarkston

 

 

We trucked in a chassis that held a 40 foot Hi certified seaworthy container, filled it with donated bikes each week that there was a Market, and sent it across the ocean to Ghana, Africa on an ocean liner. It was my hope that those bikes would get past Accra and up into the northern part of the country to where the basket weavers lived.  They did. To our delight, five villages received our bikes throughout the country and training on how to ride, fix and use them.

                        (And Jane, Rachel and Maria tested out all the bikes!)


Our container of bicycles spent 3 months at sea steaming on an ocean liner:


Our Clarkston Container of 431 Bikes arriving in Accra, Ghana Africa

Villages and people who received the Clarkston bicycles we had collected...

 

 

(The reason this project is posted is because Jane and I both have the opportunity to travel to Ghana for a month this July 2014 with my teacher and a small group of music students from the University. View PREZI on Ghana, Africa)

Here's David, talking about receiving the bikes.  He explains how the Village Bicycle program works once our bikes get to Ghana. 


Meanwhile in 2009, our Clarkston Farmers' Market  b l o s s o m e d ....!

  


  

  

...because of the baskets and the dedication of many, the market flourished...


OUR STORY OF GHANA CONTINUES TO DEEPEN because also in 2009, Upland Hills School sent me and another teacher out as ambassadors to attend the Bioneers Conference in Marin County, San Francisco. Revolution - From the Heart of Nature.

   

There, a woman by the name of Sobonfu Some' was holding sessions.  I was immediately drawn. Sobonfu is Dagara, the author of several books, and partner of Malidoma Some' - who also authored several books on African wisdom.  I understood Malidoma had visited our school one time and spent time with the director Phil Moore, talking about community and asking questions about our school and Dagara values.  He asked powerful questions like, 'Do you know why you are on this earth at this time?' and 'Do you know why you are YOU?' He wanted to know how just 2 parents could possibly raise a whole child by themselves.  In Dagara life, the children are of the village and are taken care of collectively by the entire village.  

After 2 weeks at the Dagara Music Center in Accra, we will journey to the uppermost NorthWest part of Ghana and spend some time in the villages there.  (I'll see if I can spot my red Schwinn...)

I'VE BEEN TEACHING at Upland Hills School now for 9 years. Jane is thriving in her senior year of Ted's Group.  I have a group of dynamic and radiant 6,7,8 and 9 year old children in my Morning Meeting Group.  The School is a continual source of authenticity, inspiration and depth experience for me. Teaching groups of children is a continual interplay of challenge and joy. Most definitely joy!

     

The short video clips below include school footage of children in action and give you a really good sense of our school.  Stay tuned for a full length documentary on Upland Hills School (but enjoy these first!)



This past June I began taking lessons to learn the mbira kalimba nyunga nyunga from the professor at Oakland University who is leading this Ghana trip. I am learning with plans to teach the children in my class how to play this very old instrument that hasn't changed in over 1000 years.  

                                           


The reason this project is posted is because Jane and I both have the opportunity to travel to Ghana for a month this July 2014 with my teacher and a small group of music students from the University. View PREZI on Ghana, Africa

    Upland Hills School Website 

OUR SCHOOL BRIDGE

 

It has been said by our teachers here at Upland Hills School - several of whom have traveled extensively around the world - that 'Travel is the best school there is'.  And, 'The World is our Teacher."  What Jane and I need to make a successful and safe journey to Africa together is to raise the trip funds needed in order to make the experience a possibility. 

We know we will come back different...embolden...richer...more awake.

AS CONTRIBUTORS YOU ARE INVESTING in our lives in a way that could change us forever and we are invested in giving back.  I am interested in learning the music, dance, and songs and what games the children play in the villages and meeting the weavers.  Jane has wishes to create photographic images and she is an excellent sketch artist.  Jane is part of the next generation of world thinkers.  She wonders how she can creatively link the children at Upland Hills School with the Dagara Village children in the North.  Penpals perhaps?  She plans to take photos and video.

Having the opportunity to be with the Dagara people opens our senses.  As Jane prepares to launch into the wide world of high school we imagine Ghana, Africa to be a kind of Rite of Passage Trip.  Thirteen is a hallmark age.  So is 40!  (Jane will spend her 14th birthday in Africa.)

                           


Airfare (depending on rates) and travel insurance is just under $6000.  Once we arrive in Accra, our cost for the entire month including food, lodging, transportation to the Northern part of the country to the Dagara, and lessons in indigenous arts, music and dance, is $6000.  There is an educational seminar fee that precedes the trip (happens at OU) that will require $1500 and is a mandatory part of the trip as well as visa fees and any extra costs. I am also aware that communication costs while we are there will be more expensive that in the States and medical attention and malaria meds/yellow fever vaccinations (et. al.) are a must for anyone coming to West Africa.  

Bringing us to a grand total of $16,000 but we're using Indiegogo in hopes of raising $11,000 to get both of us to this beautiful part of West Africa and back.

                                

               

                                


FOR CONTRIBUTING TO OUR EXPERIENCE you will enjoy beautiful bolga baskets as well as photographic images we're able to deliver upon return.

Please send this project to anyone you think may help make our adventure possible.  

Thank you!

 

  Anissa and Jane Howard

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Choose your Perk

Bolga Basket

$100 USD
Beautiful hand woven basket from Ghana, Africa filled with local goods and market produce. Each basket is unique in size, shape and color.
2 out of 16 of claimed

Bolga basket

$500 USD
Beautiful hand woven basket from Ghana, Africa filled with local goods and market produce. Each basket is unique in size, shape and color.
0 out of 16 of claimed

Bolga Basket

$1,000 USD
Beautiful hand woven basket from Ghana, Africa filled with local goods and market produce. Each basket is unique in size shape and color.
0 out of 16 of claimed

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