Today is our first anniversary. The Sama Gazette was launched on July 28th, 2009: The Sama Gazette is now online… Time passes so quickly! During this first year, we shared with you what caught our attention, what we liked and the organizations and campaigns we support. Our first supporters are our valued Sama Readers who from the beginning of this great adventure, post comments, send emails and read us everyday. Many of them even actively support the campaigns we mentioned on the site (like Aung San Suu Kyi: candles in Paris tonight). We are very proud you are so committed!

We are very happy such a great community came up from the Sama Gazette; it is called the Sama (formerly Epicurean) Fraternal Society. We will talk about it in the coming weeks, some announcements will be made soon.

But this year was also about meeting great people. We can’t name them all and it would be unfair if we miss some names. Nevertheless, we would like to mention fashion jewelry designer Wendy Brandes, whose contagious enthusiasm and amazing creativity caught our attention right away with Onyx Skull Ring by Wendy Brandes. Some Sama Readers are smitten too. On the ‘Twitter side’, we are very proud followers of artist Pete Fowler, aka @themonsterist. We published one of his ‘cheesy’ artwork in French Cheese: Camembert, Brie, Roquefort, Chevre… Then we published another artwork but this time from Joe Ledbetter in Beer Can chicken: A Bit of the Good Life with Joe Ledbetter. We love creative people.

More recently, we had the chance to meet with Carissa Weir. She ran to support Run for Congo Women in San Francisco on June 12, 2010. We were impressed by her courage and her commitment, and she shared her race experience with us: Run for Congo Women: Big Things Begin with Small Steps. Now things are getting very serious: she is training 6 days a week, next race will be a 7k for the Special Olympics in San Francisco in October. She has all our support from the Sama Team and the Sama Readers (one of them has decided to run after he read Carissa’s article). Go Team ‘Sama’ Carissa!

This month, we published a news about Nhimbe: arts education, artists human rights in Zimbabwe. Joshua Nyapimbi is the director of Nhimbe, a non profit arts education organization and a leader in cultural policy research and advocacy in Zimbabwe he created in 2003. Civil society in Zimbabwe is strong, despite repression and intimidation many activists are facing. It is also the case for artists such as Owen Maseko: Zimbabwean artist Owen Maseko to appear in court. We will, as usual, keep up with the news about the work at Nhimbe and Maseko’s hearing, and of course about the situation in Zimbabwe.

The Sama Gazette is a place to share and learn, we are glad you appreciate what we do. Art, music, films, design, games but also organizations take an important part on this site. Max Dana‘s commitment and interest for everything inspire us everyday. In August 2009, we published a post from her Blog: The (new) blood diamonds: it ain’t a movie… which lead us to actively support Enough Project campaign on Conflict Minerals. A lot remains to be done, as Max explains in Conflict minerals: the bloody Pandora’s Box… Count on us to keep the pressure!

This first anniversary post gives us the opportunity to thank you all for reading us everyday, for your interesting comments and very kind emails, and for following us on Twitter. We still have many things to share with you and we are currently working on something big. Stay connected and please keep your enthusiasm and your interest for the Sama Gazette, it is very motivating and we appreciate your support a lot.

Thank you, and see you next year! 🙂