A project by: Eko Samba Community
Èkó Samba Community is a not-for-profit organisation working to engage and empower children and young people through creative arts, specifically Brazilian samba. Our project is based in the low-income, inner-city area of Ijegun-Egba, Satellite Town, Lagos, Nigeria, connecting children and young people from a mix of social, ethnic and religious backgrounds.
Èkó Samba Community was established in January 2011, by Nigerian/British musician Seyi Ajeigbe. Seyi discovered and learned to play samba whilst living in London and decided that this powerful and contagious music had to be returned to the continent where it’s creators descended from.
Our aim is to bring together children and young people through the roots and community spirit of Brazilian samba to foster a space in which creativity is celebrated and cultural diversity is embraced. We provide free samba drumming workshops to children and young people of all ages who live in the local area.
Through these free workshops we help children and young people to develop and improve their self-confidence, team-working skills, leadership skills, communication, well-being, social responsibility and awareness. Above all, it is a space for children to learn, create, perform and express themselves.
In the past five years our project has grown from strength to strength. Highlights include taking a group of young drummers across the country to perform at Calabar Carnival in December 2014, and earlier this year we performed at the first ever Nigerian Drums Festival in Abeokuta, Ogun State. Most poignantly, we brought samba to the home of the Afro-Brazilian returnees in Nigeria, which you can read about here.
This year we want to bring two of our most talented and dedicated players, Tobi and Emmanuel, to London for a three-week intensive cross-cultural exchange visit.
Tobi and Emmanuel are the Assistant Directors at Èkó Samba Community and this will be their first visit outside of Nigeria. We want to expand their horizons by giving them the chance to learn with some of the founding fathers of samba in the UK and to take part in international events such as Notting Hill Carnival in London. There is a thriving samba community in London and the boys would benefit immensely from learning and playing in one of the oldest samba scenes in Europe. Most importantly they will connect with other young people who are as passionate about samba as they are.
We know that the impact this will have on the young people is incomparable to anything they have already experienced within Nigeria. By continuing to support their dreams with the belief thatanything is possible, we hope to further inspire them to be the change they wish to see within their communities. We also know that these children have a lot to offer in terms of sharing their experiences and natural abilities. In this way it would truly be an exchange of culture and ideas.
Tobi & Emmanuel are both incredibly talented and passionate drummers. Emmanuel has been drumming since he was 7 years old while Tobi’s love for drumming started when he was just 4 years old. As our Assistant Directors, these two young men have demonstrated unwavering dedication through teaching the younger members, and taking leading roles at performances and on outings.
We thought it’d be best for you to hear directly from Tobi & Emmanuel on why they love samba drumming and what they would gain from this trip.
Tobi told us that whenever he plays samba he feels “relaxed, happy and out of my trouble zone.”
For Emmanuel it’s a feeling like no other: “The only thing I feel in that moment is pure enjoyment and nothing else compares to the feeling it brings me.”
If we are able to make this trip of a lifetime happen for Tobi he believes it will benefit all of the other children at Èkó Samba Community.
Among other things, at Èkó Samba Community we inspire children to dream big. We need your support to let them know this dream can and will come true. As this trip will be the first of its kind, we see it as a gateway for future cross-cultural exchange visits for the other children. It is going to build on the foundations they have learned in Lagos, strengthen their self-belief and best of all they will bring all that they learn back to Lagos to share with the other children.
We need your help to get our boys to London. We need just £4,200 to make this happen.
This will cover the following costs:
We would be extremely grateful for any donation, big or small, to help get Tobi and Emmanuel to London. Any funds raised that exceed our target will go towards funding our day-to-day activities in Lagos such as paying for rehearsal space or repairing our drums.
Note: If you are based in Nigeria or anywhere else outside of the UK, Europe, USA or Canada and would like to make a donation please e-mail us at eko.samba@gmail.com for our local bank account details in Nigeria. Thank you!
If you make a donation, we will show our thanks by sending you a personal sign of our appreciation. Check out our tiered reward system on the right hand side of this page.
If you would like to know more about Èkó Samba Community, have a look at the links below to see what we’ve been up to recently.
Follow us to find out how we’re doing! We’ll be sharing regular updates on the campaign and more.
We need all the help we can get to reach our target. However, money isn’t everything. If you feel you would like to help in other ways, please help us promote our crowdfunding page to friends, family, and online, so that we reach as many people as possible.
Please share this project with anyone you think would support us – on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, by email, telephone, in a chat over the fence or on your blog. It’s all or nothing, if we don’t raise our total target amount, we won’t get a penny that has been donated so we really need your help to spread the word!
And we know we said you don’t need to give money to help us, but we’d love it if you did! Please sponsor us and help make this happen.