Our family has attended Harambee Summer Festival for the last 12 years of its 16 year existence. It is, without a doubt, one of the most important parts of our family's year, every year, and it is a significant part of our family history. The world of Harambee is weaved into the fabric of our family culture every single day of the year.
We are a stronger family, we are a BETTER family, because of Harambee.
I cannot begin to state what Harambee has meant to my kids throughout the years. 7 days of being surrounded by other kids that get it ALL. Get being black in a majority white country, get being adopted, get being adopted trans racially and internationally, get multi racial families, get special needs. Those 7 days make the other 358 days of the year bearable. Their friendships are life long and so, so important. I am the mother I am, and my kids are the young men they are today, in large part because of our relationships at Harambee.
In a few short weeks we will join another 80 families for our week of camp. Campers, Trailers, Tent's and loaded minivans will pour into beautiful Naramata, BC for a week of tears, laughter, fireside chats, football games going long after dusk and our precious family will be once again all together. Counsellors will come to help support families struggling with attachment or racial issues. Fana Soro and the Miyanda dancers (several of whom were Harambee kids originally) will come to share their talents and mentor youth. The big kids, who were once the little kids, will hang around with the little kids, who were once the babies and the circle of love and friendship will continue as if it was never broken.
And this same time, just down the road from camp, in Penticton, BC Rihanna will be having a concert. RIHANNA. OK, so this doesn't mean much to me but this does mean ALOT to the kids at camp. Rihanna is someone that many Harambee kids see themselves reflected in. A beautiful, black young woman with amazing talent, even if her history is somewhat complicated. Just like our kids.
SUNFM is the sponsoring radio station Def Jam is her producer
It can't hurt to ask, right?
4 comments:
Hi Jen,
I spoke to a friend of mine. Here are his thoughts, flood her myspace page, or her facebook page, email her producer. Not just you, but everyone you know and everyone each family knows. If every family knew 200 people that would flood Rhianna and/or her producer this request, that's 1600 emails, that' a lot to ignore. If I can think of anything else, then I will let you know. Then if every family member or extended family member emailed now we times that number by 15 or so.
Another option is to contact the local media and do a human interest story on the camp and the desire of these kids, contact the media and see what can happen in that vein.
If I can think of anything else I will let you know.
Thanks,
K
I would also suggest twitter and re-tweeting. If you could get a trending topic (such as #Harambeewantsrihanna or something shorter, short is good), I'm sure you could get the attention of her handlers (since I'm pretty sure they're the ones that actually update her twitter)
I know this is silly also, but YouTube videos really work. Lady Gaga will re-post people's YouTube videos on her website and could get the attention of Rihanna that way. Rihanna has a YouTube channel entitled RihannaTV that you can message as well.
Mare Sun FM on facebook is one of the radio personalities for sun fm, im going to post a link for this blog entry to her facebook (i went to high school with her, grew up in summerland since i was 6). not sure on other ideas but definately getting the word out would be key, even getting the word out about harambee would be good for the people of penticton, id never heard of it before but it sounds like a wonderful event <3 good luck!
Wow!
I have no ideals on how to get sponsorships...but if you can pull it off, how wonderful that would be for the kids!
The camp sounds great! Glad that you can attend it!
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