 Hello. The first annual one, that was my very first act as called pastor of this church. I wasn't even, I wasn't even working officially yet, so an unofficial act, but it was a lovely afternoon and this is another lovely afternoon. I'm the pastor of this church and I welcome you to our space, wonderful space for celebrations and for productions and for, especially for drumming and dancing today. There are facilities to the side of the building over there behind the black van if you need them. And please go through all the wonderful vendors here because they worked hard to get these things together for you. I would like you to know that this land was originally inhabited by the Abenaki people and it was stolen from them and so we want to acknowledge that. My brothers and sisters who were taken from native lands, Africa against their will and it is through their toil, sweat and blood that brings us where we are today. We acknowledge this as a truth and it is foundational to what is done here by the work of the Sheetah Projects, which commits to policies and practices of cultural equality to benefit current and future generations. And I do want to welcome you all here with, I'm so happy to see you all sitting in the sun, hopefully there will be more sun and less wind, right? Anyway welcome, welcome and now Heather will introduce the other things. When they went to Ghana they got me the stress. I know we're battling a little bit of the wind today so thank you for doing that with us. We welcome you, we're so delighted to share another afternoon of African dance and drumming and energy and love. So thank you so much for being here. I just want to let you know I'm turning my back to the wind so hopefully that helps a little bit. Sheetah Projects is a non-profit organization. We are thrilled that we got that designation from the IRS and so any donations that you may feel free to make are tax deductible and we are promoting diversity and education in the schools and in other venues that we can do that. Just getting out that through the drumming and the dancing and bringing people together because we're all the same and we want to just promote that in all that we do. We also collect and ship things to Ghana to help the needy. We've sent off three containers with computers and bicycles and making the difference in the lives of a lot of people. We want to thank our sponsors today who are Vermont Arts Council, the Northfield Savings Bank, we have the City of Montpeliers Community Fund that has generously supported us. We have our friends from Food Hub who are here keeping you warm with coffee and chocolate so thank you so much for that. I want to say like today is very welcome and we want to send a special thank you to our board members. We have Rob Griffin who is out directing traffic and bringing us all in safely. He and his wife Lata have built the stage and gotten us ready to be here today. Numa who is on our board who is also here helping us and taking pictures to make sure we can memorialize this event and our co-chair who is going to be out in just one moment the Amate and he I want to let you know is a music producer and a musician obviously here but he does that as part of his other job of many and he has in 2019 had won the New Hampshire Governor's Arts Award for Arts Education. I just want to get this right and is New Hampshire's artist laureate for 2022 to 2024 and most recently the winner of the Ghana Music U.S. International Collaboration and so it is with that that we begin our celebration and so I will hand it over to the musicians and I thank you and I hope you enjoy every bit of this afternoon. So thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Hello. Hello. Can I see your hand up? Oh wonderful. Great. SIDA African Cultural Project SIDA projects incorporated SIDA means Thanksgiving and appreciation. So that is what we stand for. We appreciate diversity. We appreciate community. We have to appreciate everything that we do, the help you give us and today our guest artists are from Acuaba, Duns ensemble in New Hampshire. Acuaba is a shanty word that means welcome, Acuaba, welcome. When you arrive in Ghana you see it boldly written at the airport Acuaba that means you are welcome home. So they are also here. We welcome them and we welcome you as well. So get yourself ready to rock with us. Thank you so much. This evening or this afternoon so we can all support, we can all show the love all the way from New Hampshire to Africa to Vermont. Cultures here, cultures here. So we have Ghana and we have Guinea in the house. So two different cultures here. First right on the shore of Acra and we're going to give you a rhythm and song called the Pan logo. The rhythm became very popular in the 1957 when Ghana get independence. It was a celebration rhythm and everybody was cheering and having a good time with that. So that's what you're going to hear. That's what we're going to play for you, the Royal Drums, the Fonto Front Drums. It's going to be a short break just for you to see. We want you to... I've been coming to drum in this church building closer to the stage and let's do just some two minutes. I'm in students. Yay. Thank you so much. Thank you. They played for you a rhythm called Jolly. Jolly. Thank you, drummers. Thank you. Please, if you are here and you are interested in drumming. We're going to play a couple of songs from Ghana and then we're going to invite people to join us as well, to dance together. I'd like to share a very simple song with everyone. If you know the song, you can join along too. This is called Funga Allafia Ache Ache. Funga Allafia Ache Ache. It means praise, praise, may peace be with you. Praise, may peace be with all of us. Ache Ache, peace, peace. So I'd like you to recite this with me together please. Everywhere you are, wherever you are. If you can recite that with me together. So here we go. We all say together. Funga. Funga. Funga. Allafia. Allafia. Allafia. Allafia. Ache Ache. Ache. Ache. Ache. Ache. Ache. Funga. Funga. Allafia. Allafia. Ache Ache. Ache Ache. Ache Ache. Ache Ache. Okay, now we're going to sing together. It goes like this. Funga. Allafia. Ache Ache. Can we try that? Funga. It's going to sit down. And it's a master drama too. A great job in it to do, you know. Josh Williams. Josh Williams. Good singer. And then I have a brother here. He's a balafonist. And he's from Guinea. West Africa. Give it up. Let's give it up to our brother. Michael Ossenda. Beautiful dancer. It's my part nine crime, you know. We do this together. Let's give it up to Manchester. New Hampshire. Thank you. Thank you. We love you. I love you. Thanks for having us. An audience. We love you. Yes. Teach them one song. They go with this. No. No. No. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Raffle is going. But after that you give them one one go. She could like go. That's right. That's right. So we're going to share one song with you before you go home. But now I'm going to invite Christine to come over here to draw the raffle. So Christine, if you're ready, we'd like to, you know, see you here on the stage. Let's do this. Shake it up. Let's draw. Wilder loop. Wilder. Wilder. Wilder. Wilder. First prize. Second. Gilbertson. G. Gilbertson. One more. Thank you so much for your support. We are nonprofit. We are new. If you have any skills that you can. I mean, you can contribute or support our project, drumming dance school education support our project, drumming, dance school, education, cultural values, sharing, diversity, collecting used items, shipping to Ghana to help the needy, anything you can do, computer skills, anything. We need helpers and supporters. So please join us and let us move the project forward. Thank you very, very much. Thanks so much for coming. We'll make sure that we do it every year. Church who's hosted us for this on this day and what a beautiful venue. So we are very thankful to all the for all the support and bringing it together and making it happen. And for you all for being here and bringing your energy. We are looking forward to more of these. We're also going to be doing a fundraising dinner in two weeks. So if you are interested in a Jalof dinner that you tested today, please let us know. And thank you again. Have a great afternoon. It sounds like we got one more. Just one minute. We just brought this to show you. This is our shipment getting ready to go to Ghana. We shipped last year 65 used bicycles 65. And here is a college student who lives like Barry and then the school, the campus is somewhere else like three miles. So we gave him a bicycle and he was very appreciative because now he can ride his bicycle from his geometry to school. Here is loading to ship. And here is a school from the national. I donated some seven computers and we have to go to the school and set up your computer lab for them. And so this is one of the students. And here is our man, our main man in Ghana who receives the shipment and distribute setting up and teaching the students computer stuff here. Here is one person, a recipient of one of our computers. And here is a little girl for the first time having a bicycle from the Shida project. And so this here is loading also to ship. This truck was shipped to Ghana, was fixed. And when Heather and I visited Ghana in June, we even got the use of it. We were able to use it to drive around. And so the project is really working. But we need supporters and we need people to be able to be there for us. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Shida says, thank you. Apaaba says, welcome and thank you.