The Drum Beat 116 - Communication and Change News and Issues

PROGRAMMES

1. Alioto Grupo Teatrico - Guatemala
A drama group from a small settlement community outside of Guatemala city sponsored by Mujeres en Solidaridad. Due to high levels of poverty and lack of economic opportunity, youth often leave their homes in the countryside of Guatemala in order to live on the streets of the capital city. This group is Alioto's attempt to keep young people from leaving and to care for them when they return by enabling them to tell their story. The youth work together to develop the dramatic presentations and then travel to other communities to show them. After each dramatic production the audience is asked to respond; to tell of their own experience as well as to comment on issues such as Child Rights in Guatemala.
Contact Mujeres en Solidaridad, telefax 251- 80-86

2. Vaanavil: A Video Tour - Tamilnadu, India
Marupakkam, an organisation working in Madurai, is attempting to arrange video tours on development issues with short and feature films and documentaries in Tamilnadu. This tour project is named 'Vaanavil', meaning 'rainbow' in Tamil language. Voluntary organisations, action groups, people's movements, trade unions, political parties, educational institutions, interested groups and individuals either by going alone or combining with other local agencies can organise such tours in their field areas. Marupakkam will coordinate the tour with a video projector, the films, reading materials and a team of facilitators. Start date is Jan 1, 2002. They are seeking donations of films.
Contact Amudhan rp [email protected]

3. BBC World Service's 'I have a right to...' - Global
Campaign includes awareness-raising debates and events in participating countries, radio programmes which will be broadcast to a potential audience of 125 million people, and a website. The project is designed to assist people make informed choices about their lives and participate in discussion and debate in regional, national and international arenas. Radio programmes will be produced in English, Albanian, Serbian, Russian, Turkish, Hindi, Urdu, Spanish for the Americas, Arabic, Hausa, Swahili and English for Africa.
Contact BBC World Service, Tel: (44) 20 7240 3456

4. KUBA AIDS Prevention Campaign - Rwanda
The 'KUBA' campaign, a programme of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Communication Programs (JHU/CCP), is targeted at young adults and promotes abstinence, fidelity and condom use (which roughly translates to KUBA). The launch of this campaign was a large concert in May 2001, which also reached another one million radio listeners. The musicians promoted AIDS awareness and prevention messages throughout the evening.
Contact Jane Brown [email protected]

5. Association for Advancement of Information Technology (AAIT) - Bangladesh
Towards the end of 1996 AAIT embarked on a project for the establishment of an ICT training programme for the women scientists, researchers and technologists. Over the past 5 years, this project has included a series of workshops. Most of the participants of the workshops (with different levels of educational qualifications - from diploma to Ph.D.) have been found to have no exposure to computer knowledge. After a short interval, the trained participants were contacted at their workplaces and about 90% of them were found to apply their acquired knowledge in their respective fields.
Contact Lutfor Rahman [email protected]

6. Biyani - Australia
This project is for Aboriginal women by Aboriginal women, with the aim of coming together to improve physical, emotional, spiritual and mental health, community and explore connections to the land. Biyani is centered around residential camps that provide Aboriginal women with a weekend away to explore issues of health, culture and connection in a safe and supportive environment. Services are available for preventative health care needs as well as counseling, physical activity, and other social activities. 
Contact Robyn Field, Tel: (02) 9727 2222

IMPACT DATA

7. Impact Data - Male Motivation Campaign for Family Planning - Guinea
Before the campaign, 23.3% of men discussed Family Planning (FP) with someone and after the campaign 44.9% had discussed FP. The figures for women were 26.8% who discussed FP before exposure to the campaign and 37.8% who discussed FP after exposure. There was a significant increase for both men and women in being able to name at least one modern FP method. Men with no exposure to the campaign showed an 18.2% knowledge level compared to a 92.6% knowledge level with a high level of exposure to the campaign. The percentages of people in the community who approved of FP were felt to be much higher by both men and women who had the greatest exposure to the campaign. The figures for men and women who were currently using a modern method of FP were quite low, and in fact, dropped for men in the follow-up survey. 13.1% of men reported using a modern method of FP before the programme compared to 12.7% at follow-up survey.
Contact Mr. Guillaume Bakadi [email protected]

SUPPORT

8. Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis & Malaria - Global
The Transitional Working Group (TWG) to establish this fund convened Oct 11-12 in Brussels. The Fund will support programmes for strengthening health systems and country-level partnerships involving governments, the private sector, and civil society. In addition, the Fund will support the purchase of critical health products, such as bed-nets, condoms, antiretroviral drugs, anti-TB and anti-malarial drugs, on the basis of an independent review of local realities. Its resources will be complementary to existing programmes and focus on clear and measurable results. Application process will be determined in 2002.
Contact Melanie Zipperer [email protected]

9. African Women's Development Fund (AWDF) - Africa
A fundraising and grant-making fund which aims to support the work of the African women's movement. The beneficiaries of the fund will be local, national, and regional African women's organisations working for social justice, equity and peace.
Contact: Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi [email protected] or
Joanna Foster [email protected]

PLANNING MODELS

10. Participatory Change: Ten Steps in Supporting Grassroots Rural Development - as summarised by The Center for Participatory Change, USA
Presents a way of working with grassroots groups that combines community organising, popular education, and international participatory development.
Contact them for a copy of the larger paper on participatory change [email protected]

WEB SITES

11. Journalists Against Corruption or PFC (Periodistas Frente a la Corrupcion)
A regional anti-corruption project that strengthens democratization processes in Latin America by promoting and facilitating quality and ethical watchdog journalism and supporting journalists and media dedicated to investigating and exposing waste, unethical conduct and corruption in government and other parts of society.

12.Global Action Network
A reproductive health and global population online resource designed to connect and empower innovators from around the world.

MATERIALS

13. Knowledge, Information and Development: An African Perspective, edited by Christine Stilwell, Athol Leach and Simon Burton
A collection of essays covering policy issues, information re-packaging, freedom of expression, ICT's, reader studies, information delivery approaches, community profiling and evaluation studies by academics and practitioners in Southern Africa.
Contact Dawn Fowle [email protected]

14. Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health, by Laurie Garrett
What do Russia, Zaire, and Los Angeles have in common? Each is unprepared to deal with a major epidemic, whether it's caused by bioterrorism or by new or reemerging diseases resistant to antibiotics. This publication exposes weaknesses in our medical systems and the ramifications of a world suddenly much smaller, yet still far apart when it comes to wealth and attention to health. 

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