Dear all,
With this post we would like to take the opportunity to thank you all for your support and partnerships, and to wish you a happy new year!
We would also like to take a moment to reflect on the past year by showing some of the highlights of 2019:
January – The 1+1+1 team joined us in Sierra Leone and worked, amongst other things, closely with the basket weavers in Brama Town. The results are amazing!
February – The official opening of the Lettie Stuart Pottery School! After a period of hard work and preparations, the school was officially opened!
Besides the official opening of the pottery, a new agreement was also signed with Grassroots Gender Empowerment Movement (GGEM) Microfinance, an institution that offers loans to individuals and SME’s.
March – The Freetown Music Festival! A blend of Icelandic, English and Sierra Leonean musicians.
April – Aurora supported Magbenteh Community Boarding School with its School Feeding Programme for 186 students and 10 staff members.
May – The month of the pottery centre! Both Peter Korompie and Guðbjörg Káradóttir volunteered at the pottery centre for a month – Peter has assisted in building a new kiln, and Guðbjörg has assisted with teaching and improving production lines, just to name a few. Besides the help the pottery received over this month, a solar panel was also installed that provided electricity for needed equipment and light during the cloudy days.
June – The Aurora board meeting took place in Geneva, Switzerland! Two full days, the board discussed and brainstormed about the past and upcoming year(s), and the foundation for Aurora Impact was laid out!
July – Even though it was rainy season in Freetown, the preparations for the OSUSU album were in full swing!
August – An afternoon in Iceland with Guðbjörg Káradóttir at the Icelandic Museum of Design and Applied Arts.
September – Another Aurora employee! Suzanne joined our team as Project Manager, and has been focusing on a new project to come, called Aurora Impact. We’re looking forward to launch this project in 2020!
We also started releasing the first songs by Osusu, the collaboration of Icelandic, English and Sierra Leonean musicians! Who would have thought one year ago, that in 2019 a full cd would be released?
Oktober -The first ICT course took place in our new office, and 19 students graduated from a 3-week ICT course!
Talking about computers, October was also the month we donated 20 computers to Leaders College for their new IT lab!
November – Another employee joined Aurora! Veronica joined us as our receptionist!
Also, another ICT course! This time, we organised a 2-week beginner ICT course and we could not have been more happy about the results of the exams! We hope to see the students back at one of our Intermediate ICT courses!
December – The launch of Technovation Girls Sierra Leone! We are proud to be one of the main sponsors of this event, in which young girls between the age of 10-18 are formed in teams in which they learn the basics of coding and developing a mobile application. In addition, we have provided them with six laptops!
