Objectives
To support the exchange between Juakali Drummers and Projeto Axé. In phase one, educators and representatives of AMREF and Projeto Axé travelled to the respective project areas (Nairobi and Salvador de Bahia), while in phase two the exchange was between members of the AMREF group Juakali Drummers and beneficiaries of Projeto Axé. The exchanges allowed operators to share practices and methodologies used in their respective social contexts and the young people to get to know each other, play music together and examine their common roots in the African diaspora that resulted from the slave trade.
Beneficiaries
Educators and representatives of AMREF and Projeto Axé; young artists from Juakali Drummers and the beneficiaries of Projeto Axé
Activities
In 2007 and 2008 Alta Mane coordinated an exchange between AMREF educators and members of the group Juakali Drummers and the educators and artists of Projeto Axé. The participants had all taken part in the pedagogical-musical workshops organised in the context of AMREF’s programme Child in Need and Projeto Axé.
This project drew strong interest from the Brazilian embassy in Kenya, which actively supported the initiative and invited the Juakali Drummers and Axé youth to perform several shows together during Afro-Brazilian Week organised by the embassy at the National Museum of Kenya.
Partners
Projeto Axè (Centro de Defensa e Protecao à Crianca e ao Adolescente) (Salvador, Brazil) is a Brazilian association engaged since 1990 in the rehabilitation and social reintegration of street children and adolescents in Salvador through a course of education based on the Pedagogy of desire and the ArtEducation methodology (dance, music, plastic arts and fashion design).
Information
From 2006 to 2010 Alta Mane supported Projeto Axé in the following activities: production of the BandAxé CD (2006), 2 training courses, 1 in-depth learning course, the band GECA (2007), 1 percussion course (2008), the Matriz das Artes courses (2008-2009), Tournée GECA at Rome International Film Festival (2008), the Axé Study Tour at Umbria Jazz (2010) and the development plan of Axé Italia Onlus (2009-2015).
AMREF Health Africa has for almost 60 years promoted health projects in the remotest parts of Africa and 60 years after its inception is now the largest African health organisation operating in the continent. Today AMREF operates in 26 countries with 172 health projects south of the Sahara, including health centres and mobile units providing health care to nomadic and rural populations.
AMREF has been present in Dagoretti – a vast area on the southern outskirts of Nairobi that includes numerous slums – since 2000 with Children in Need, a rehabilitation programme for street children.
Juakali Drummers
Juakali Drummers was a musical group comprising 20 street children who used musical instruments made from recycled and waste material gathered in the slums of the Kenyan capital. This ‘street orchestra’ grew out of the musical workshop launched in 2005 by AMREF Italia and the Dulcimer Fondation pour la Musique, under the auspices of the AMREF project Children in Need.
The group performed in the slums of Nairobi and surrounding villages and in numerous institutional contexts. It dissolved in 2011 and 14 original members established the cooperative Slum Drummers.
Information
Fondation Alta Mane supported this exchange in 2007 and 2008.[/fusion_tab][/fusion_tabs]
