April 2009 News

Encouraging start for our in-house DVD production

Emma Hartwell, our IT Manger has just completed a three-day course focusing on DVD Studio Pro with a view to streamlining our in-house production of audio-visual DVDs. This has proved very successful and we are already well on our way to completing all 28 lessons on health education and life skills. This also means that Emma is now an Apple Certified Professional, which gives us better access to support and documentation on the Apple suite of software that we use to create the DVDs.

Date for your diary:

We hope to hold a supporters evening during the first week of June. This is likely to be in Leamington and will bring you up to date with developments as well as asking for your help as we scale up our efforts over the coming months.

Steve and Emma went to visit Petra Svitkova in London

Petra works for LK Bennet in Covent Garden and offered to help TME after we held an evening shopping event at the store last year. Petra had recently trained as a graphic designer and she has been working hard on the background screens for new lessons being produced. This has been a really valuable help and has meant that we can now produce a complete new lesson in-house. Petra,s design for the screen when you get a question right is copied below.

Thank you to Eurotalk

After more than five years of collaboration with Eurotalk we are now moving to producing the DVD discs ourselves. During that time Eurotalk helped us develop the idea for using DVD as an educational tool for the poor and authored the specialist software, which allowed us to create lessons in other languages very cheaply. They have never charged us for any of the assistance they gave us which included more than 6,000 actual discs, which have been distributed around the world. They have also run the Junior Language Challenge primary school competition annually for the last 5 years, the proceeds of which go to supporting our collaborative efforts in Africa. You can see more about Eurotalk,s programme and even buy copies of the discs at www.learnaboutonline.com. Eurotalk will continue with their own innovative non-profit educational assistance to countries such as Malawi and Uganda. Many thanks to all at their Fulham office who have helped over the years.

Successful fundraising event

One of our patrons, Fazeelah Jeerooburkhan has recently retired. “Faz” was a great supporter of our fundraising events and even held a charity auction for us in the grounds of her lovely home.
Many thanks to her for her support over the last few years.

Cherie Blair becomes new Patron

We do have one new patron; Cherie Blair. Cherie hosted an event at Downing Street for us in 2005 which had great dividends which we are still benefiting from today. Cherie is patron to 34 other organisations so we are really lucky to have her on board.

Steve and Bev met Corinne Sandenbergh

A South African lady visiting her new grand daughter in the UK. Corrine is involved with an urgent initiative to counter trafficking and prostitution in South Africa in the run up to the world cup next year. Gangs are already buying up properties near the stadiums around the country specifically to entice young girls and women into sex slavery. We hope to collaborate by making a lesson teaching girls how to avoid this so that the message gets to every school child before the event. If you think you might be able to help with this in any way then please let us know.

Recordings update

Bev recorded “Avoiding Malaria” in Hindi with local supporter Sasmita, as well as “Safe Water” in Mandarin with Warwick student, Samantha. This latter lesson will be available later in the year and will be one of the first lessons in another language produced inhouse.

Positive feedback from Anne Gloag

Anne Gloag (of the Stagecoach bus company) reported that our discs had gone down well in Kenya where she is exploring how best to distribute them to community groups.

Annual accounts ready

The TME annual accounts were submitted to our accountants just three days after the end of the financial year. Many thanks to Kay Bugg for keeping on top of our receipts and payments so that a fully balanced and reconciled set of books were ready so quickly.

Board Meeting

Not quite at the level of the G20, but taking place on the same day, we had our latest quarterly Board meeting in London last Thursday.
Steve broadly outlined his plans for TME for the next 5 years, plans which will be fleshed in more detail by the June meeting for approval by the Board.
Other key matters discussed included various methods of critically assessing the impact of TME in the field.