The Somali week event took place in London from Oct 20^th to 28^th 2012. This was the 6th year where the event was held. The focus of the Somali Week festival was on arts, culture and music. The main theme of the event was on theCourage of Artists that use their trade to challenge the social and political status quo. Kayd Somali Arts and Culture, in collaboration with Redsea-online Cultural Foundation and University College London among others, are proud to present Somali Week Festival 2012.

PENHA and the Food We Want Project (FWW) participated by disseminating  the idea of the project  to participants through leaflets and other promotional materials. Moreover,  traditional arts and handcrafts produced by women from the east Africa region was also presented showing their economic empowerment, feeding their families and contributing to the GDP of the countries. Such alternative source of

 income has been helping east African families by increasing their purchasing power on food and other social services. The event was coordinated by the Somali community in London, London Tower of Hamlets Council as well as other participating organizations and individuals..

The MP for Tower of Hamlets opened the event addressing the participants on the idea of communities coming together and creating a platform for exchange of cultural exchange and the merit of sharing events in the community.

The festival which lasted for ten days, each day conducted with different engaging and interesting activities. For the duration of the event, the Food We Want project ideas were widely publicized by explaining to participants who are keen to on the project, displaying photographic posters and handing out flyers.  Issues related to growing food at family level, community food systems, etc were some among the others raised during the discussions between the Food We Want staff and the event participants. About 3000 participants were part of the Somali Week event who participated in the different scheduled activities.

As Tesfaldet Okubayes from PENHA described the overall event…was colourful which brought Somali people from different parts of the UK, and some attendants from USA, Canada, EU and Somalia as well. It was also open to people of other nationality, especially those who are keenly interested on the cultural and political issue of Somalia. Fortunately, it was good opportunity for PENHA to familiarized the FWW project with a such diverse group of people.…