Steve and Associate Clive Dove Dixon hosted Joseph Kobo and his wife Mabel for a weekend last month. Joseph is Nelson Mandela’s nephew and is using our discs in his rural community programme in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Joseph and Mabel talked enthusiastically about the impact of the DVDs in their area where HIV is especially prevalent. Over the past two years the numbers of people dying from AIDS has risen hugely so that they have 4-5 funerals every weekend. In the past funeral directors used to advertise their services but now they are completely oversubscribed. Our DVDs have been especially useful when Joseph’s team of community workers have started their work in new villages. The 10 portable DVD players, which we left there in 2007, are mostly still working and are used each month. The button-pushing technology means that new communities become immediately interested and more open to listening to the important messages Joseph’s church is communicating. Joseph and Mabel’s report means that we are very keen to scale up our input in that area – there is a sense of urgency to do more. We are planning to use Joseph’s links to extend the programme to new partners in South Africa and also Swaziland, which has one of the highest HIV infection levels in the world. One in three people in Swaziland are infected with the virus. Many thanks to Clive Dove Dixon for providing accommodation to Joseph and Mabel during their stay.
We have been trying to explore ways of testing the effectiveness of our DVD lessons for the past few years and it is now one of our major priorities. Dr. Andrew Williams, an Associate of the organisation, has suggested many different avenues but following meetings in May we are now pursuing possible links with Brighton University and teaching hospital. The first stage of this will be a round table meeting with Dr. Kamal Patel – also an Associate – from Brighton and Dr. Trevor Wheatley from Haywards Heath sometime in September. This will be aiming to start the process for designing a robust piece of research which will look at the difference in knowledge, behaviour and possible health outcomes between two groups of people, one of which has had access to our lessons and the other of which has not. If you have any knowledge or interest in this aspect of our programme do please get in touch!
Many of you will know that we have been working with a South African Production company over the past three years to produce our four HIV titles in all the 11 official languages of South Africa on a two DVD disc set. This has had endless technical difficulties but we are pleased to say that the disc is now finished. We have added French and Swahili languages as well so that this one product can be used by over 200 million people in Africa and beyond, not counting English speakers. We now have the challenge of how to distribute the disc quickly and effectively.
Wherever large groups of people are involved in the same thing others will be looking at ways of exploiting them. We have recently met Corrine Sandenberg who is a South African working to protect children from being trafficked. Corinne told us that houses close to the sites of the 2010-world cup football stadium are being bought up specifically for the purpose of prostitution and plans are being made to kidnap children to populate them. Corinne’s plan is to get a message into every school in South Africa before the end of this year alerting children to the dangers and how to avoid them. We are trying to involve new patron of TME, Cherie Blair and South African President Jacob Zuma in order to help Corinne in his quest. If we can, we will make a short lesson specifically on this topic as it is already on our wish list of intended lessons drawn up at the beginning of the project. After introducing the idea to a number of groups Corinne wrote: “Amazing to hear from you. So far I've been to East London (Transkei) and have delivered your clean water DVD to a geological company - AGES. They are ecstatic about getting material which they have wanted to distribute years ago.”
We are working hard to produce an outline programme for this year and the following 4 years. This will focus our priorities in 2009/2010 on 6 countries: South Africa (including Swaziland and Botswana), India, Cambodia, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. We will have materials for other countries and these will be freely available but our efforts will primarily concentrate on these 6. Part of the plan will involve upgrading our communications, so if you think we are not very good at that then please tell us how we can improve so that your ideas can be factored in. Next month’s email may have a different look to it and we are considering simply sending a link to a web page or producing a pdf which will include photographs. All opinions welcome so don’t hold back! Also if you have any links to the 6 priority countries, are likely to visit any of them over the coming months or know of people who might like to use our materials then again please let us know.
At the end of last year we sent 200 ex BBC DVD/TV combination units to Uganda for distribution with our discs by Pastor Paul and Eagles Wings. These incredibly good value machines were initially approved for duty free import by the government supported by our patron the Ugandan High Commissioner in London H.E. Joan Rwambyomere. Unfortunately we have just heard that this decision has been reversed and the shipment had been in port so long the authorities were threatening to auction the goods. As a result we are currently negotiating hard over the duty needing to be paid so that we can get them out for distribution.
TME company secretary Tracy Stanbury has decided to visit TME partners in India in July along with her two sons Joel (19) and Christian (16). They have been avidly fundraising and will be hoping to get a good number of translations done as well as well as looking for new partners. The itinerary includes Sumanahli Leprosy centre in Bangalore, Calcutta and the sisters of the cross in Assam.
TME`s in-house production team have re-mastered 11 lessons in English so far – it`s very exciting seeing our own lessons become a reality.
This could not have been achieved without the generous donation of images given to us by various individuals and organisations, mentioned on our credits page (Click Here). This list is steadily increasing and we are extremely grateful to all involved.
A medical student from Bristol University got in touch recently to say that DVD lessons they took to South Africa last summer went down very well -
and could they have more for this summer,s groups to take out with them.
Last time they bought a couple of portable DVD players from Argos, which they left with a Women,s group and a Youth group. They also bought speakers so that the DVDs could be more easily heard by a larger group.
They plan to take similar equipment with them this year too.
Getting the kids to answer the questions using the DVD player remote control proved very useful, as it gave everyone a chance to answer - not just those with the loudest voices.