education saves lives - it's simple
News Flash May 2010
Steve and family attend the wedding of TME Associate Jyotsna Chandrani in India
In February Steve traveled with his wife and two "children" to Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, and Chandigarh in India. The first week was holiday and they were priviledged to be included in the wedding celebrations in Chandigarh. Jyotsna is one of our longest serving Associates and has helped with translations and recordings into Assamese as well as strategic planning for India. We wish Jyotsna and Paramvir the very best for the future as they settle in London. After the wedding Steve and daughter Jess visited Sister Lizy in Kolkata. Lizy has been using our discs for nearly 8 years and is now working with children from the streets. It was very moving to use one of the HIV discs with a group of mother’s from the slums and watch their quiz score rise from 4 out of 10 to full marks after watching the lesson. The costs of the trip were not paid by the charity in case anyone thought it was a jolly!
Steve and his family at Jyotna's wedding
Some good news from Goldman Sachs!
Emma Hartwell - Expert mother It's official!
Edward Hartwell - 7 months old
News
Launch of new DVD lesson on Human Trafficking
The hideous plight of people being traded as a commodity galvanised us into producing our most recent DVD lesson title and has opened all our eyes here at TME. Yes, we've all heard of this problem, but it's only when you start finding out a few more facts and figures that you truly begin to realise the scale of this awful activity. Corinne Sandenbergh of Stop Trafficking of People (STOP) in South Africa originally suggested we get involved. Corinne and her team have since been invaluable in drafting the lesson script and helping us source images - this has been a real joint effort. We decided to launch the new lesson at a select gathering in London earlier this month - using the beautiful and unusual Sir John Soane's museum to try and coax along new supporters. Both Stephen Clarke and Helen Taylor Thompson from TME, along with Ruth Dearnley from Stop the Traffik, gave brief but hard-hitting details of some of the effects of human trafficking. At the moment the lesson is only available in English, but we will be working hard to get it into other languages as soon as possible.
Tracy returns from India
Tracy Stanbury and her two sons Joel and Christian recently returned from two weeks travelling across India visiting 3 of our partners and recording an amazing 36 Indian language soundtracks for our DVD lessons. To read more about their trip Click Here.
The photo shows Christian and Joel with children from the Nav Jeevan project for street children in Kolkata.
Bishop Joseph Kobo and his wife Mabel visited UK during June and spent a weekend in Leamington Spa.
Joseph has been using our discs in Eastern Cape Province of South Africa where he has founded a church and a Bible school. Joseph re-told his story of being part of the Mandela family and his journey from ANC terrorist to Christian pastor at a special meeting at Holy Trinity Spittalfields. People who attended were treated to a glass of Pimms on a fine summer evening and we made some good contacts for progressing the project. There is a weekly service in Urdu at the church and over 140 languages are spoken in the immediate area so there are possibilities for collaboration over translating our scripts.
Mad dash to finish DVD authoring!
Emma Hartwell who sends this monthly update to you will be leaving on Maternity leave during August and so there is a mad dash on to finish re-mastering the 28 DVD lessons in-house before she goes! Emma is our main resource for the DVD authoring now but we are keen to train other supporters to localise the English lessons into other languages whilst she is away. This requires the use of an Apple Macintosh computer and an interest in audiovisual editing. If this describes you then please do get in touch!
Shipment held in customs.
The shipment of DVDs to Uganda is still stuck in customs with a threatened bill of £7,000. Apparently there is a surcharge if the TV units are imported used instead of new but our Patron HE Joan Rwabyamere, the Ugandan High Commissioner to London, is trying to intervene.
Stop the Traffic!
We have also met with another South African women who is working hard to try and counter the plans which are being made for trafficking of people - especially children - in order to meet demands from people travelling to the world cup there next summer. Corrinne Sandburg wants to get a message to every school child in South Africa about how to stay safe before the event takes place. We were able to arrange a meeting between Joseph Kobo and Cherie Blair (who is involved with "Stop The Traffic") in order to see how Corrine's efforts could be supported. Many thanks to Jonny Hollins who brokered that meeting and the follow up one with Joseph and Steve Chalk who heads up "Stop The Traffic". We are now looking to produce a DVD on this issue in the next few weeks and hope that a high level meeting in South Africa in October can be organised - possibly with the president Jacob Zuma - in order to launch it.
Meeting with Libby Brayshaw.
Steve and Bev met with Libby Brayshaw - one of our very active supporters who has been working with Global Links Initiative and who seeks to connect people with similar outlooks and aspirations. Libby first put us in touch with Lady Doak College in Madurai, India and they have been terrific partners translating many scripts into Tamil and using the resulting discs. Libby hopes to continue to develop new links for us so that the impact of our work increases.
Local Supporter's Evening.
We held one of our periodic updates for people living in the Leamington area during June, this time at the house of John and Ann Loscombe. Many thanks to them for opening their doors to some 25 people all of whom are actively behind the project. Amongst the attendees was Martin Lee who is a trustee of a trust fund, which helped finance the South African multi-language DVD. It was great to be able to report to him that they are at last finished!
Route-master bus trip generates £1000 Rotary donation
Trustee John Hacker recently took a group of Rotarians from the East Grinstead club to Brighton on his Route-master bus - whereupon they presented him with a cheque for TME for £1000!
Our grateful thanks to John, Brian Jeffries and all our supporters at East Grinstead for this very generous donation.
John's bus
Mandela’s Nephew back in town!
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.
Joseph Kobo to speak at Spitalfields Church
Moving Forward on Evaluation
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!
South African DVDs finished at last
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.
South Africa Gears Up for The World Cup – the down side
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.”
Five Year plan about to appear
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.
Customs Nightmare in Uganda
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.
Visit to India in July
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.
In-house production off to a flying start!
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.
Exciting news from Bristol University Students!
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.
Urgent - People Speaking the following languages needed NOW!!!!
| Country | Language | India | Assamese, Bengali, Urdu, Kannada, Tamil, Marathi |
|---|---|
| South Africa | Setswana, Zulu, Xhosa |
| Kanya | Swahili |
| Uganda | Ateso, Acholi, Lugisu, Luganda, Runyankole |
| Rwanda | Kinyarwanda |
To read TME's archive news Click Here