We now have official society status! On Tuesday, August 7, 2007, I received the paperwork from the British Columbia provincial government confirming that we are now an authorized society. Our official name is the Africa Village Project Association. 

We can now open a bank account as a society and officially accept donations for the Project. We have some plans for fundraising, and Charleen McBeath, the assistant director of the Project, is in charge of this. Announcements about fundraising events will be posted on the website to keep you up to date. 

To get society status, we were required to form a board of directors, which is in charge of running the association and making sure that the provincial laws are followed. Here are the board members: Sheena Ashdown, Dale Hamilton, Charleen McBeath, Robert Trowhill, and Valerie Neil. If you would like to get in touch with any of us, you will find our email addresses by clicking on “Contact Us” in the main menu of the website. 

 We have received more photographs from Tumaini, our liaison with Okaseni Village, and Melci, the village chairperson. Our webmaster, Zack, has posted these pictures under “Photos”.  

When you have the chance, take a look at them. What a wonderful idea of village life they give! The lushness of the area and the proximity to Mount Kilimanjaro bestow a tropical enchantment to the place. Perhaps our shared history as descendants of the original inhabitants of the country make such pictures resonate deep in our psyches.  

The quality of some of the pictures unfortunately is not the best, but you can check out the originals at Arnold Anthony < >  where the quality is much better. You do have to register at this website, but you don’t have to sign up for or buy anything so it should be okay.  Enjoy! 

We are delighted to have formed our first partnership with an African village. Okaseni Village is on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro in northeastern Tanzania, close to the border with Kenya.

It took several steps to find Okaseni. Inspired by Stephen Lewis, HIV/AIDS activist and former speical UN envoy to Africa, I sent my report to his foundation in April 2007. Two weeks later, I was ecstatic to receive a phone call from Alexis Macdonald, Director of Programmes of the Stephen Lewis Foundation . I could hardly put two words together! She gave me much good advice -- the most important was that I should find a contact in a village. A contact, she said, would make establishing a relationship with a village much easier.  

Great idea! But how to find a contact far away in Africa from a technology institute in a Canadian city on the west coast of North America? A colleague and now one of the founding members of The Africa Project, Patricia Sackville, gave us the answer. At the time, she was taking an on-line course about the Holocaust with participants from around the world. She volunteered to send out a call to those from Africa.

Within hours, she received five replies. Unfortunately, due to the time crunch at the end of the term, it took me several weeks to get back to them, but I immediately heard back from Tumaini Minja, a lawyer and peace activist in Tanzania. Tumaini lives in Okaseni with his mother and sister and was extraordinarily helpful and responsive to my inquiries. After weighing the information he and the Village Chairman, Melkizedeck Mushi, sent me, I became convinced that Okaseni would be a perfect village for The Africa Project.

We are tremendously pleased to have formed this partnership with the Okaseni community and hope that our future work together will help to develop this African village.

You can read more about Okaseni by clicking on the Okaseni Village link on the left menu.