IF YOU HAVE EMAILED US IN THE PAST SIX MONTHS, IT IS POSSIBLE WE DID NOT RECEIVE YOUR MESSAGE.

We sincerely apologize for this and are working on getting it corrected as soon as possible. In the mean time, please email Danya directly at danya.fast@gmail.com if you have any questions, concerns, comments, jokes, etc. Or write on our Facebook page.

Thank you so much for your support – we hope that you will have the time to contact us again if you did so previously (even though we kinda screwed up).

Much love,

The Urban Project Team

We had two great events during the fall: A CD release party at The Lamplighter in Vancouver (featuring local hip hop talent and a fierce free style battle) and a sold out Halloween Party at The Legion (featuring some of the best costumes we’ve ever seen). Our Legion event raised almost $2000 for the youth we support.

We want to thank everyone who took the time to come out to these events. As people who run a charity on the side of our ‘real’ jobs, we know how busy you are with your own commitments and that coming out on a Thursday evening takes effort. We also want to thank all of the people who don’t ‘officially’ work for us but nonetheless continue to make invaluable contributions to our efforts. In reference to Halloween, thank-yous in particular to Christian for keeping the tunes pumping all night long, and to Emily for the decorative genius.

Here’s the best news: with your continued support – whether it was volunteering your time and services, paying ten bucks for a ticket to one of our events, buying a CD, or mailing us a cheque – we have been able to house all twenty of our youth in Tanzania for another year.

When Danya returned to Tanzania in August, she was able to renew the housing and school fees of only a few youth. The struggle was to come up with a better option for the guys than the large group house we originally set up. We have learned that this is NOT the best way to do things – at least in Tanzania. As part of the solution to this problem, we are excited to announce that we have brought on two staff in Tanzania in order to help us set up more feasible housing situations for the guys and ensure the sustainability of the Dar es Salaam project in our absence.

First of all, we have brought on David Munkyala as Project Coordinator in Dar es Salaam. Over the past few weeks, David has scoured the streets of Dar es Salaam’s Uswahilini (outlying areas) to secure and pay for housing for all 20 of our youth in Tanzania (this time in the form of rooms for 2). David is 24 years old and has recently graduated from the University of Dar es Salaam with a BSc in Aquatic Environmental Sciences and Conservation. His future plan is to continue his studies with a focus on the management of aquatic resources. We are so lucky to have him with us for the meantime!

Mussa Majita (Ninja) is 24 years old and has been an asset to the Dar es Salaam project from the outset (and even before that when he worked with Danya on her Master’s thesis). Over the past two years he has proven himself highly capable of leadership and focus within the project. It would not be an overstatement to say that we could not have carried out our activities in Dar es Salaam thus far without Ninja’s guidance, and we are excited to announce that we have solidified his role as Project Assistant.

We are excited about the year to come. A project in BC is next up on the agenda and we look forward to diving into that in the summer of 2010. Until then, we hope you will continue to give us feedback and push us in new directions.

Thank you/Asante Sana

Danya, Elisa, Jay, Leah and Greg (as well as Ninja and David in Tanzania)

In the fall of 2008 we used your donations to help a group of talented Dar es Salaam street youth record an album of their hip hop music.

The group (known as Wakali Wadowntown) recorded a 6 track album and called it Maisha Magumu (Hard Life). Please come out and celebrate this music at our CD release party in Vancouver!

When: Thursday, September 24th
Where: The Lamplighter Pub (92 Water Street in Gastown)
View Google Map
Time: 6 to 10 pm

ALL CD SALES GO DIRECTLY BACK TO THESE YOUTH ARTISTS IN DAR ES SALAAM IN THE FORM OF SAFER HOUSING AND SCHOOL FEES

Are you an aspiring MC?

To keep with the spirit of supporting local talent, we are also hosting an OPEN MIC HIP HOP BATTLE where aspiring MCs can get on the microphone and show their skills. Click here to get more details.

ANNNNND…

PERFORMING LIVE is the badestass hip hop crew coming from Victoria.. THE CFC

COME OUT FOR an amazing night of East Africa and West Coast Hip Hop!

Due to technical difficulties in Tanzania (i.e. the total absence of a workable internet connection), it was impossible to bring you updates over the 5 weeks we spent in and around Dar es Salaam this summer.

Without further ado, an update!

We returned to Dar es Salaam at the end of July 2009 with the goal of following up on last year’s project. We wanted to see how the guys were getting on, as well as pay their school fees and rent for another year. To a large extent, these goals were realized. It was wonderful to reconnect with the guys, all of whom are healthy. All of the Wakali Wadowntown artists are still engaged in making music. In particular, Omary (a.k.a. Ziggy Ras), Kisu and Ninja are all actively pursuing relationships with local producers and have been recording new music.

Importantly, we were able to provide support to Chimo and Kindo for another year of schooling, and to renew the rent on Ninja’s room. We also set up an additional room for Baraka. Danya’s Swahili has improved in the past year, which made discussing aspects of the project and subsequent developments with these youth that much more engaging. Of course we were doing lots of filming and photography along the way, as well as one-on-one and group ‘interviews’ about the project so far as well as future directions.

We also had great success with bringing several of the youth on as project assistants, a role that demanded more responsibility in coordinating many aspects of the project, from budgeting lunch for 20+ people in the mama lishe (low-cost eatery) to setting up meetings with school principals and landlords in the uswahilini (areas of low income housing). This role also brought with it a small additional salary, and represents one more way in which we are using your donations in order to enable these youth in pursuing their own plans and projects, which range from starting a small business selling shoes (in the case of Ninja), to purchasing additional art supplies (in the case of Kindo).

Of course – as with any project that attempts to confer as much decisional power as possible onto the youth with whom the project is created – there were also setbacks. We arrived in Dar to learn that a number of the guys were eager to move into new accommodations. With regards to the larger house we set up (which was intended to house approximately 12 youth), it has become clear that such an arrangement may not be ideal as compared to smaller rooms. For one thing, that particular house is not close to a water source, which means that water must be purchased for a small fee. This has proved to be an obstacle for the youth who are living there, as they are still operating on extremely low incomes accrued from washing cars in the city center (an income generation strategy that is frequently undermined by city police).

But perhaps more importantly, living together in a house with 12 people carries with it a huge amount of responsibility in terms of working together to pool resources as well as to build respectful relationships with landlords and neighbors. It has become clear that working together in groups of 2 to 3 to achieve these objectives may be a more reasonable level of responsibility given the present circumstances of most of our young participants, who, although securely housed, are still largely struggling to make a living in the context of ‘life on the streets.’

Thus, when last year’s housing contracts expire this coming November, we will not be setting up a new house. Instead, we will be transitioning to an arrangement that houses youth in groups of 2 to 3 – a setup that has already evidenced success in the context of this project and which most of the guys feel is a better option for them given the lessons we all learned this year.

We do not see these sorts of setbacks as failures, but rather as important learning experiences for everyone involved. Furthermore, we believe in being honest with our donors and the public about the challenges we have faced and the solutions we have come to. We have received amazing feedback over the past year, and we continue to welcome and encourage your feedback and alternative perspectives. Thank you to everyone for continuing to support the Dar es Salaam project – your donations have allowed us to facilitate tremendous opportunities in the lives of these youth.

P.S. For a more ‘play by play’ account to the trip please visit our Facebook page and flip through our Urban Project 2009 photo album.

If you have donated previously and need a tax receipt, please email us at info@theurbanproject.org and provide us with your full name and mailing address. If you did not use the on-line PayPal system, please also provide the amount of your donation so that we can confirm the accuracy of our records over the course of what has now been a lengthy process.

We look forward to seeing you at upcoming events or hearing from you regarding The Dar es Salaam Project.

With your donations, we helped a group of young, street-based artists record a hip hop album, and set up housing for 17 of them who needed it. We even bought some bicycles.

We learned a lot about what it means to facilitate a ‘youth-directed’ project (including how to give up control and stomach frequent disagreements without rushing in and trying to fix everything).

It was amazing to watch the entire experience unfold through the lens of a camera.

We can only hope that future projects play out as beautifully.

Thank you for supporting our vision, and the young people whose talent made it a reality.

DF

For many of these youth, this will be the first time in a number of years that they have been able to consistently sleep indoors and avoid the numerous threats to health and safety – including malaria, physical violence and persistent theft – that accompany sleeping on the streets. They are all taking the moving-in process very seriously, as evidenced by the frenzy of shopping, cleaning – and of course celebrating – we witnessed this past week:

Lesson one: Our initial decision to reduce the number of youth involved from 30 to 20 participants has proven to be a good one. Managing a group of 20 between three directors has been challenging, particularly when working in a second language. Even for 20 youth, setting up safer housing and school fees has required significant time and energy, as nothing happens quickly in Dar es Salaam and negotiations between Tanzanians and wazungu (white people) can be particularly arduous.

Lesson two: Expectations that ‘charity’ will always be straightforwardly embraced and met with gratitude are likely to be disappointed. Urban Project is committed to sponsoring youth-driven artistic projects, in which the young people involved have significant decision-making power and creative control. Within the context of the Dar es Salaam project, this has meant that there have been no shortage of arguments among participants regarding everything from who to live with in their new homes to which Bongo Flava track is best suited for radio promotion. While heated debate is undoubtedly a much more commonplace aspect of the Tanzanian cultural lexicon, frequent arguments have been trying at times for project directors, who are working hard to balance an ethic of youth participation with productivity. At the end of yet another long hot day in the city, we oftentimes find ourselves looking for a sense of gratitude that may not be forthcoming.

Lesson three: Given the short duration of the project fieldwork period, attempting to do too much may not benefit either party – ourselves or the youth involved. Our plan was to spend the first two weeks recording an album of Bongo Flava hip hop music, and then to sit down under the proverbial mango tree all together and talk about what would be the best way to compensate participants for their time and creative energy. It quickly became clear, however, that this relative lack of structure (combined with the grandiose nature of the items that were on the table – new housing, training course fees, and bus tickets home to visit family) was somewhat overwhelming. After all, what we were offering was nothing short of a complete overhaul of everyday life for these young men – a new place to sleep (after years of sleeping outside), a new daily routine centered around attending school (after years of hustling for money of the streets), and finally, a chance to return home to see family members (after many years of separation). Although in theory these are all welcome changes, within a six week fieldwork period this degree of change may not be realistic or desirable. In the end, we decided that setting up safer housing for everyone involved was of primary importance, and that we would work diligently on doing this one thing properly before turning our attention elsewhere.

And so that brings us to where we are today, traversing the dusty streets the uswahilini (low income housing sprawls) in search of housing and braving negotiations with corrupt landlords who are ‘hungry’ for more money than is owed. At the same time, we are paying school fees and for new school uniforms among those of our participants who are currently enrolled in studies. It is hard to imagine leaving, yet that is exactly what we will be doing in just two short weeks.

We are done the album and in transition. Jay and Kindo are working on the album artwork in between days at the beach and hot afternoons in maskani (meeting place) Amazoni.

Today we are in the maskani and a favorite customer arrives to get his car washed. A few of the guys hop to it, but not before arranging to listen to the completed album on the car sound system while they work. The result is an impromptu music video-style performance in the midst of car washing and running back and forth with buckets of water. Before leaving, the customer offers to take the album to a local radio station.

We are working on setting up safer housing. This will be accomplished by renting rooms in the uswahilini, low income housing sprawls that were – as Dotto stated eloquently – ‘built without a map.’ At a meeting today in the city botanical gardens, the guys commit to spending the next two days ‘doing mishemishe ‘ (i.e. hustling around town) in order to put all of the necessary pieces in place.

Dar is heating up. Each day is hotter than the last and all of us are feeling it. Excitement levels remain high, as we leave the studio behind and seek out safer shelter in the ghetto.

DF