On October 11, Kennington will twin with Musanda in west Kenya. My village will be the second in England to twin with an African village. Musanda looks as if it’s the first village in Kenya to twin with an English village. Four delightful inhabitants of the village were in Kennington at the weekend so we organised a Towards Twinning event. You can see from the pics that it was moving and fun. The choir entertained us and the scouts have become penpals with some children in Musanda. They received their on paper letters and that felt special.

I was the first speaker because I was able to tell the His and HER –story! The twinning was my suggestion but it was made possible by Rev Samson Kuponiyi agreeing to chair the twinning committee and getting the support of the Parish Council. This act of friendship wouldn’t have happened if Kennington hadn’t been the only village in the UK to, every year for 50 years, to raise money for an overseas project. The intention was to show a few minutes of this video (link below) but that didn’t happen. The video was made for a KOA Gala Night  to be shown before the folk singer Peggy Seeger and I burst through the door. It celebrated the ways KOA enhanced village life through events like the Bagley Wood Fun Run, the Kids for KOA concerts to encourage music and the First Pop up shop in Oxfordshire which ran every August from 1975 -2018.

https://vimeo.com/64536645  Fifties Fandango

For 40 years, I organised the main social event mostly Gala Nights with a three course meal and musical entertainment (arranged by the much missed Rebecca Alison). But, my first attempt at organising a KOA event, was in 1975 when I produced a one act play by Checkov and, downhill after that, because next up was a trite piece of my own writing A Victorian Musical Extravanganza. It was out of that KADS was born. (KADS being our Am Dram Society.) So, for many, the video brings back good memories.

Then I looked at the scouts as I said,

‘KOA started in 1969 long before you were born -in a time before mobile phones and the internet and before easy travel around the world. It’s because of that history that we are here today preparing to twin with a village in another continent wanting to be friends and to learn from each other. Kennington should be proud of what we achieved in the 50 years of KOA.  I am most proud of being involved for 45 years.

When I handed a cheque to the founder of   Integrated Village Development Trust, Michael Wright thanked the village saying, ‘Over the years you have undoubtedly changed the lives of more than 100,000 people for the better.’

This little village has made its mark in 3 continents.

The Buildings and infrastructure: The buildings we funded are still working. I often see Tonia Cope Bowley who founded the Thembisa Trust so know the preschool / community centre in KwaZulu Natal is still benefiting the community there. The disability centre for victims of land mines in Cambodia, the library in Bonu, Benin, and the Spirulina production unit in Musanda( PiC behind me)  are still operational. My ex- business partner former Kennington resident, Gill Hedge, went to Mali. She described how the electric grain grinders we bought for the women in the 40  villages in Manankoro saved them three hours a day work pounding the grain by hand.  The project had transformed lives. The women were enterprising and with the time saved they started market gardens and small businesses and were able to help their children’s education.The water tanks are still on the school roofs in Jinja province in Uganda providing drinking water for the staff and children. The toilets high in the Andes in Peru are still working.

Revolving Loan schemes in three continents are ongoing.

Helen Wright keeps me updated on the project in Jharkhand. India (2002) The boys taken out of bonded labour and given loans to set up businesses or  to buy tools  for  apprenticeships is working because all but one paid back the loans.

Projects that had ripples: The Henry Doubleday Research Foundation, received funds from our government for research in organic agriculture but not to put any in to operation in Africa. We paid them to do it in Baring district in Kenya. Halcyon visited that project.  It was so successful that neighbouring governments are copying it. Similarly the peripatetic skin care clinic for people with albinism in Tanzania is still working and the Malawi government has copied it.

That was the past but a past I believe Kennington can be proud of .

I’m a believer in libraries giving access to the world and for upward mobility. I wouldn’t be talking to you today if, as a child, I hadn’t had access to Luton Central Library. That’s why I am also proud that many people in Kennington rallied around to save our library from closure and are helping to build the first community library in west Kenya in Musanda, the village we will twin with.

Meeting here Today connecting with Nancy Rajab and Eunice  is the Present

The Future is the scouts and their pen pals and the Cosmic Cats authors. I brought together St Swithun’s School with a school near Musanda for this project. Storytelling is loved everywhere in the world- it can connect us all. The children here and there produced this beautiful book. That is what friendship can do, feed the imagination and encourage empathy and love not hate. In the video, I was in a fifties car. Rajab and Eunice have flown here in a modern jet. In October, we hope to be transported to a new era- a future you in this room must create.

   

Jacqs Motion serving the Cosmic Cat cake and Daniel Livingstone reading his fabulous story.

There was an exchange of gifts. Amena Sutton, adminsitrator of Kennington Chorale presented a  copy of I Love You All– the history of the choir and Crucifixion the work especially composed for them by Tom Edny.