December 2008 News

Dorothy Masuku

Dorothy is a renowned South African Jazz singer who was exiled from the country during apartheid due to her radical politics. She is a good friend of Nelson Mandela and was in London recently to take part in the African Film festival. She attended our shopping evening hosted by LK Bennett in Covent Garden and subsequently met with Steve and TME Associate Chris Wheatley to explore how she could help. Most of her time is spent fundraising for charities and we hope that she will be able to introduce us to new partners in Southern Africa.

Meeting with Seb Bishop

Helen, Tracy and Trustee John Hacker met with Seb during December. Star of channel 4's "Millionaire's Mission" programme last year he has recently been appointed CEO of the global branding company (RED). Seb has agreed to introduce us to representatives of "The Global Fund" and had a raft of suggestions about how to scale up our impact. Thanks to Mark Pickering for introducing us!

Ted Lankester

Ted is from the Community Health Global Network and is also a physician at Interhealth in London. He is widely respected in the International Health field and has authored a number of books on Primary Healthcare. We are keen to forge better links with CHGN as the other members might well be able to use our products in their existing programmes.

Andrew Williams

Andrew is an Associate of TME and also a paediatrician. He works hard to get TME better known in the medical profession and is also keenly researching ways of studying how effective TME interventions are. Andrew is in the process of developing links in both Southampton and Oxford with a view to testing the efficacy of the DVDs not only in the developing world but also in impoverished communities in the UK.

Nisay Soung

We have also had the pleasure of Nisay Soung helping us during December. Nisay is from Cambodia and is in the UK to learn English. She was able to test out some of our Cambodian Language lessons as well as work on a translation of a lesson on maintaining boreholes.

DVD progress

As you may be aware, Charlie and Emma Hartwell have been busily beavering away at making audiovisual lessons for TME using DVD studio pro.

We have currently made not only one full lesson about Diarrhoea but an interactive quiz too. This just needs to be fine tuned with better buttons and graphics. So Watch this space!!!

Exciting news from Eagles Wings

The Eagles Wings team have recently returned from a 2-week humanitarian aid trip to Kenya and Uganda, armed with 4 sets of English DVDs, Luganda, Swahili and Runyankole. They have made contact with over 50 community leaders throughout Uganda- that is brilliant news. Lucy Oliver, one of the Eagles Wings team, said:
"It really is a wonderful feeling being able to give these valuable resources away to people who need them so desperately. We are seeing tremendous results as we return to places we have been to previously where the DVDs had been given out."
Well done to Eagles Wings! A full report will follow shortly!

This is a picture of Eagles Wings showing TME DVDs at a seminar.

Associate Jyotsna Chandrani is selling specialist Christmas Tea in Aid of TME

The tea is sourced from her family's plantation in Assam, N. India and there are three aromatic varieties to choose from starting at £6.
They would be a great addition to a Christmas stocking!
Click here for more details

TME Concert

Esme & Diane Howard are very kindly arranging a concert on Saturday 24th January 2009 at 7pm. This will be held by kind permission of Mrs Baker at the Theatre in Nutley Hall, High Street, Nutley. This Classical Concert is in aid of Thare Machi Education and all proceeds will go to their work in Africa and India.
Due to restrictions at Nutley Hall we are not permitted to charge an entrance fee, but we are allowed to ask for donations and we suggest there should be a minimum gift of £10. This will include wine and canapés during the interval, which have been sponsored and are at no cost to the charity.
Please join us on what promises to be a delightful and entertaining evening. For further details please Click Here and send us an email with your contact details.

Panasonic support

As reported before, Panasonic have seconded two "High Flyers" from their staff to work with us for 12 days in the period leading up to Christmas. Rafal is from Poland and is working on a programme to market and distribute our discs in South Africa. Kerstin is working in Spain and is doing the same thing for India. Both have started to segment the market (ie divide it up into manageable chunks) and identify ways in which each segment can be accessed. Kirsten visited our Leamington office briefly on her way to meetings with Panasonic in Bracknell and Rafal is in touch via telephone conference calls. By December we hope to have identified ways to progress our plans in both countries.