How Aang Serian began, 1999-2001
The Tanzanian NGO Aang Serian (‘House of Peace’) was founded in March 1999 by the organisers of a youth cultural festival in Arusha, northern Tanzania, assisted by Gemma Burford, a visiting Oxford graduate from the UK. Initial seed funding was raised by students at The Gregg School, Southampton.
Aang Serian was initially registered as an `organisation for the promotion of arts and culture’ under the umbrella of the National Arts Council of Tanzania. It supported small groups of urban youth in the city of Arusha to generate income through creative arts projects, which included:
- Recording traditional and ‘fusion’ music (including Swahili hip-hop, African drumming and Maasai chanting)
- Writing poetry and non-fiction
- Marketing traditional handicrafts such as bead jewellery
- Organising live performances
Yunus Rafiki and Lesikar Ole Ngila, then Director and Chairman of Aang Serian, were invited in 2001 to attend the celebration of the United Nations International Day for the World’s Indigenous Peoples in New York. There they met the late Ingmar Egede, an indigenous elder from Greenland. Following a conversation with him about Indigenous youth and education, the `Aang Serian Foundation Certificate in Indigenous Knowledge’ was born.
Aang Serian Community College The birth of Noonkodin and Serian UK Building up Rewriting education for rural Africa
