Helena, Lotten, Sune, Cia and Aklilu

Dear Helena, Lotten, Cia, Sune and Aklilu

It is heart warming to be in Sweden on a bridge building seminar. I and Steve from Budondo village arrived in Gothenburg on 30th May for an intercultural seminar.

The intercultural seminar brought people from different countries and institutions, who are interested in networking and finding in between common things to talk about and build bridges for networking. I have met people who work in solar and biogas development, people who have experimented in creating sustainable alternative villages, found people having same ideals as ours in Budondo and who will form the bulk of the network. We are developing blogs for Budondo where you will be able to get our updates.On 31st we traveled to Ed where we help workshops the first 3 days. Then we came to Trollhattan and visited the Film Vast centre and the docks built in 1800, 1844 and 1916. The centre of seminars was University West and it was a wonderful experience. I am doing the translations to the 'Mi' film shot in Budondo, then we shall have more meetings at the university to deal with many other things in waiting.We flew back home on 10th June.I thank whoever cared to know us and work with us. Thank you so much, you gave us a beginning. We make mistakes on the way, but they are not intentional and we find ourselves having been face to face with them. These have become part of the process and we have learnt to evaluate ourselves and build on the shortcomings.

Below is an update of Budondo center:
We set up an intercultural learning center on Budondo village. We are trying to create an alternative villege, where we have biogas, solar energi, tree planting and food growing as some of the programs. Since your visits in 2005 and 2006, we have had more people visiting Budondo to see what we are doing: Asa Peterson from Sweden in December 2006 who came to see how Dramatool ICT was working in a rural village, Brad Stoller and Mecca Burns from the USA in July 2007 who shared with youths skills and methods of using The Theatre of The Oppressed, Eleonor and Sara students of education at University West in Gothenburg came to do field work at Budondo school in September and October 2008,Ase, Lars and Lennarth teachers at University West visited our center in January 2009 and Lena, Lisa and Angelica students of education at the University of Gothenburg had fieldwork at Budondo school in April 2009. All these visits have encouraged learning at Budondo school. Many items for games, footballs, pencils, colors, books have been donated to the school. The children have had pen pals in between these interactions.

We have come up with the idea of a community library and computer lab where the youths and teachers can come and learn how to use the computer, and read books. I would like to enable them network with the outside world through the Dramatool.org and other networks. We have received many books to this effect. The village football and netball teams also got a life line when they got balls. We are now finding ways of getting solar panels to get energi for lighting and computer. It will then be possible to install internet on the village. We are also developing a film program on the village; we want to use film as another alternative in communicating between peoples of different cultures and languages. I have set up a studio for actors for the children and youth theatre groups. They gather during holidays to learn acting skills, play making along other things like morals, family and community values. I also discuss with them life skills, climate change, therelationship and differences between the individ and material things.


mukisa