Binta Bah, a female student, Mohamed and myself attended a workshop at Makeni which was organised by Charlie Haffner and Sorious Samura. The theme is Material Development workshop, SIERRA LEONE: A NATION’S JOURNEY. The project is about changing the narrative inspiring the people owning the future.
This workshop also focused on discussing problems that are affecting the country and it citizens and the way forward on what we can do as Sierra Leoneans to see that we have a develop nation for the present and future generations.
It also based on gathering information from the point of views of the various speakers, participants and research people so that Charlie and his team can extract some of these ideas so they can use them on the documentary.
Most of the speakers emphasised on good leadership, changing the mindset of the people, education, identification of values and how people should use their values to execute their functions which serve as a guide on their day to day activities etc. All of those people that spoke are inspirational heads in their communities and the nation as a whole, they have done lot of good things. I was moved by their speeches and I believed many of my colleagues that were present for the workshop were inspired too. There were representatives from almost all the district which made the workshop so interesting and got different ideas and the feelings of people from their various places.
It was amazing to have inspirational people amongst us, they talked about the past, current and future about SL and also talked about their life history. We learnt lot of lessons and how some of them demonstrated their values which serve as a big boost to their achievements.
Charlie Haffner and Sorious Samura were listening to people’s view about SL’s way forward, in which the participants discussed many issues that are affecting SL for it to develop.
A Barrister from Freetown talked about Sierra Leone, he said that SL is the 3rd Largest producers of Rutile but yet still we are way behind on development. He further explained how vulnerable Sierra Leone is, where in most of the companies are exploiting the land with low income to the country. People on those mining areas are really affected with no benefit. It was very sad at that point but he finally talked about empowering and encouraging the young people to acquire quality and real education which he believes will make a big impact on the lives of people and the nation at large.
I actually worked with Clive and Miles on filming the workshop whilst Mohamed and Binta were amongst the participants. Miles is a friend of Clive, a Sierra Leonean man that is very experienced on filming. Clive, Charlie and the team treated us inclusively and we were very pleased.
Thanks Adrian and Miriam for giving us such opportunity to go out and learn new things and also been able to participate on the Nation’s journey project which will inspire Sierra Leoneans to have good thinking and implementing good practices that will drive SL to a brighter nation.
Find out more about the film at Insight TWI’s website.