The Angolan Women Voice Association UK

By Angela Wathoni

The Angolan Women Voice Association UK is a nonprofit charitable organization which is based in Nottingham and is pioneered by three Angolan women leaders in the Portuguese speaking community: Paula Pontes, Tania Tavares, and Ana Camacho all of whom live in Nottingham. Paula has been on the forefront in the quest to help these new and emerging communities easily settle down in Nottingham. Paula Pontes is a volunteer for Mojatu Foundation with keen interest in women affairs and issues affecting new and emerging communities. She helps in signposting service providers and offer support to these vulnerable people in the areas of interpretation, guidance, and integration. With Paula’s intervention, the association was able to secure a place provided by Mojatu Foundation at Marcus Garvey in the Lenton Business Centre. According to Paula, the association runs two major activities for Angolan women, mothers and children at the centre geared towards supporting them in tackling problems of loneliness, mental health and post-Covid trauma. The kids’ activity is held every Saturday from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm and brings together children from the ages of 0-14. They come along with their parents and during the three-hour session that they are kept busy, their parents will be having a coffee time. This coffee time serves as a moment of discussion, networking and sharing interesting and pertinent issues surrounding family and life. While their parents continue on their conversations, the kids engage themselves with the support team on painting, drawing and other artistic things for the first hour. Teaching them Portuguese takes the second hour because for this group, their language serves as identity to them and transmitting it to the children is significantly paramount. The kids are allowed to choose what to do in the third hour with activities ranging form playing games, dancing, sports among other. The Thursday session is for the seniors, 50 years and above, starting from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm. As elders and people who would like to exchange pleasantries and increase their networks, the first hour is dedicated to a meet and greet session. This is a moment they enjoy and would easily transition from jokes and banter to the second hour when they are engaged with knitting, crochet, sewing and other forms of household activities. The third hour serves as a teamwork for them to organise and coordinate their activities for the following week. Before they disperse, they check on each other’s wellbeing and mental health, and whether anyone needs support or guidance. They also use this hour to plan their field trips and mobilise resource to fund the activities. Paula revealed that they have been facing challenges in identifying the right people needed during the initial stages the project but now they are growing, and the project is spreading by word of mouth and social media. She said these activities are key to the postCovid recovery for the elders and mothers who struggle with the family chores and bringing up their kids. Paula however said that the provision of refreshments and snacks are self-generated through contribution from participants and parents of the kids. She regrettably mentioned that “even our day field events to other cities within the Midlands are selfsponsored and this where we are really struggling because it would mean that if a Senior doesn’t have money at that moment, she would not be turning up and that is not good for their mental health.” She said they are soliciting for funding from donor agencies, philanthropists, and the general public.

Social media handles of Angolan Women Voice: Instagram: @ Angolanwomenvoiceassociationuk, Facebook: @ AngolanWomenVoiceAssociationUK

By Pa Modou Faal

The Meadows is one of the most multi-cultural communities in Nottingham. It is home to Africans, Asians, Caribbeans and Europeans alike who bring out diversity in culture and tradition to the entire residents. This indeed makes it a friendly atmosphere to live in, visit and do business. It is evident by the opening of the grocery shop on the Wilford Grove last year, The Grand Bazaar. However, another local resident Jonathan Bryan commonly called Barber Joni has followed suit with the Clean Cutz Berbers salon located on the junction of Holgate Street and Glapton Road.

Barber Joni told Mojatu Magazine that The Meadows is a quiet and friendly neighbourhood which is good to do business. When asked why he chose The meadows over the City Centre and town, Barber Joni said, “here is where I was born and brought up and as a local citizen, I deem it necessary to operate a barbering business in my neighbourhood because that is my profession and there is no Afro-Caribbean barber shop around”. He also said having these types of businesses in the area will attract other forms of investment. He however, stressed the need to have Caribbean grocery shops among other types of black owned businesses that address their needs in the area saying, “it will reduce the burden of going all the way to Radford to do shopping considering comfort and time management factors.”

Speaking on his clientele, Barber Joni said his clients are a mixture of what defines the community – Caribbeans, Africans, Asians, and native English people, young and old. He is happy with how the business is progressing and thanked the people for their patronage and reception. In as much as operations are going well, there are some challenges as well, he noted.

Barber Joni also appealed to the authorities to do more for the community especially in kids related activities. He said the area should be turned into a more kids-friendly environment which will help them have activities that can contribute to shaping their transition to adulthood. “These are mitigating factors in combating crime and idleness which I think is needed in every community no matter how good it thrives”, said barber Joni. He acknowledged that the community centre and library help but there is need to engage the younger ones in a more positive approach.

Commenting on crime in the neighbourhood, Barber Joni said that things have greatly improved comparing the current state of the community and before. He challenged the notion of crime free saying, “a crime free neighbourhood is just an advocacy which we all subscribe to, but that is hardly obtainable and if one looks at The Meadows now, it is one of the most friendly and livable environments.” He expressed delight that people of different cultural backgrounds come to his barbershop, interact positively, and have fun while they enjoy his clean haircuts. Barber Joni humbly asked for a continuous patronage from the Afro-Caribbean and Asian communities as well as the other residents of The meadows that he currently enjoys. Such patronage he posited, will encourage others within the community and beyond to invest in the area.

w v WE NEED A PEOPLE CENTRED COP26. INSTEAD, WE HAVE AN ELITE

MARKETPLACE By Aderonke Ige

COP26 is full of big boys in small rooms. It needs to be led by the people, not Northern elites with the financial interests in maintaining the status quo. Half a century ago, the Niger Delta region of Nigeria was lush and thriving. Then, oil was discovered and multinationals like Shell turned up. Fast forward through several decades of exploitation, pollution, gas flaring, and dozens of oil spills, and the area could not look more different. Today, ash and tar cover once luscious farming land. The fishing industry has been all but decimated. Water has become dangerous to drink with UN scientists finding 8cm of refined oil floating on top of water that supplies drinking wells. The air is thick with smoke. People’s livelihoods have been destroyed and life expectancy has plummeted. Niger Delta communities have repeatedly called on Shell to clean up its mess, but instead of launching the urgent measures needed to save lives, the multi-billion-dollar oil major has instead repeatedly denied responsibility and spent millions in courts in an attempt to evade liability. This is the impact wrought by one oil major in one region, but it is a microcosm of what the fossil fuel industry is doing to the planet as a whole. According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), fossil fuels are the dominant cause of global warming. In 2018, fossil fuels and industry accounted for 89% of global CO2 emissions. To keep global heating to an already devastating 1.5C, the development of new oil and gas fields has to stop this year. It’s as simple as that. Like with cleaning up the Niger Delta, however, stopping projects in which they have already invested vast sums is not in the interests of the fossil fuel industry’s executives and shareholders. And so, while they invest millions in greenwashing campaigns and attempts to confuse the public through notions like “net zero”, they continue to pump tens of billions into oil and gas. It is true that they are also investing in renewables, but a 2021 report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) found that less than 1% of fossil fuel companies’ annual investments in the Global South have gone into clean energy. The economic interests of oil and gas majors are simply at odds with the need to tackle climate change. And yet, at COP26, the global summit to address the crisis, there are more delegates associated with the fossil fuel industry than from any single country. Campaigners from Global Witness assessed the list of participants and found 503 accredited participants with links to oil and gas. That is more than double the 230 approved delegates representing the UK, which is hosting the talks. That’s not to imply that more representation from Global Northern governments like the UK would lead to better solutions. They are already the ones with the most power and that continue to enable fossil fuel companies. They are the ones benefiting the most and suffering the least from the devastating impacts of their activities. They are the ones largely responsible for historic greenhouse gas emissions that are disproportionately affecting the formerly colonised Global South. Although the whole world stands the suffer, it is the wealthy industrialised nations in the North that have the most to lose and the least to gain by taking the climate crisis seriously, at least in the short-term. Some representatives from civil society like myself have been given observer status at COP26. This is supposed to allow us to participate in and scrutinise the process, but my yellow badge doesn’t get me into the areas where the real negotiations are happening. We’ve been closed off from critical spaces and, at times, had whole sections of the conference cordoned off to us. To make matters worse, two thirds of the civil society organisations that usually send delegates to COP could not even make it to this conference to enjoy this highly limited access. Despite repeated reassurances from organisers, participants from Africa and elsewhere in the Global South have been denied visas, been unable to access the Covid vaccine, been upended by the UK’s changing travel restrictions, or been priced out due to the lack of accommodation in Glasgow. COP is always elite and exclusionary, but this year’s conference is unprecedented in its marginalisation of those most affected by the climate crisis. And so, what we have at COP26 is a lot of big boys in small rooms. We have a process led and lobbied by heavily polluting countries and industries that are more interested in their media image than the hundreds of millions of people that are suffering. We have a fundamentally illegitimate global summit in which the voices of those least responsible for climate change and most vulnerable to its impacts are effectively silenced. What we need is to completely invert this failed model. Fossil fuel companies and their lobbyists – concerned about their ability to profit – must be barred from negotiations. And civil society groups representing hundreds of millions of people – concerned about their ability to live – must be foregrounded. We need a people-centred COP that can talk about critical issues of justice and take clear and urgent actions like immediately banning any new oil and gas projects – not the elite marketplace for environmental criminals that we currently have.