Concerts for sensitising young people on HIV/AIDS

[Guest guest]

The Freedom Foundation-India has a 5-year programme on sensitising and

recruiting young people to work on HIV/AIDS related issues. These young

people are in the age group of 16 to 25 years of age. The Freedom

Foundation- India hopes to recruit about 5000 young people per year to work as

peer educators in their respective regions and cities.

As part of this initiative The Foundation has in association with Levi's

Strauss as been conducting a series of concerts featuring the top Rock

bands in India, Sri Lanka and the US of A. The Foundation had bought out a music

video featuring Orange Street with 14 leading young actresses,

actors, VJ's Anchor's from leading TV shows for young people, and youth icons.

So far The Freedom Foundation has organised 11 concerts in 8 cities with

the help of Entertainment Media Pvt. Ltd.

The Foundation identifies a local NGO (HIV/AIDS) in the respective cites or

region to be the local partner. The role of the local partner is two fold,

one is to work on a package of HIV/AIDS related issues pertaining to young

people and present it in a series at the venue of the concert, to work on a

systematic process with The Freedom Foundation on the possibility of

recruitment, second is to provide a platform for the local partner to focus

on the local Organisation own mandate of working on a systematic process of

providing Information, sensitising , educating, and communicating, in an

interactive ongoing dialogue. Each concert attracts a crowd of approx. 3 to

4 thousand young persons.

The Freedom Foundation has so far recruited about 1650 young people at the 8

major cities in India. Each young person works to sensitise 50/75 other young

persons in a month's time. The Foundation hopes to recruit 25 thousand young

people in the age group of 16 to 25 in the next five years. The scope of this

programme is enormous since its ripple effect might mean that it reaches

thousands of our youth in the country. The unique feature of this is that not

only does it provide an additional employment opportunity but its on going

nature of process means that initiatives are not event based and hense

progresive in nature.

On the 22nd and 23rd of February 2003 The Great Indian Rock will be held at

Pragathi Maidan Hamsadvani Theater.

On the 22nd the groups playing will be Buddha Blown (Chennai) Them Clones

(Delhi) Envision (Delhi) Cognac (Kolkata) Motherjane (Kochi), Winning band from

The Great Sri Lanka Rock (Sri Lanka) Moksha (Chennai) On the 23rd, Strange Brew

( Pune) Felixis (Shillong) , Friday the 13th (Delhi) Acquired Funk Syndrome

(Pune), Zero (Mumbai) Pentagram (Mumbai) The Jonas Hellborg Band (USA)

All in-between the age group of 16 to 25 are Welcome.

The Freedom Foundation- India can be contacted at

freedom@...

or ashokrau@...

[Guest guest]

Dear Geoffrey and All,

Hello and will be answering your other lovely email soon (my power went out yesterday as I attempted to answer you, Ed, and other on partnerships...more power to partnerships indeed!!), but wanted to say that this is a fantastic idea, and one that is happening in Africa to a degree already. There is the organization Africamix (http://www.africamix.com )--whose overall message is child abuse and wellness, and they address HIV/AIDS, all through the use of music--and there are events in Tanzania which are planned along these lines, with a US-based organization planning a series of concerts targeted towards youth, which will encourage them to go get tests and counselling at portable VCT kiosks set up at the venues, I believe (I can find info on this again and post it). There is also NextAid (http://www.nextaid.org ) and AAAW (http://www.aaaw.org ), and much going on in the theater and other performing arts like puppetry, which is huge in African countries. Dance groups (traditional dancers, and others, I have no doubt) are adapting national or local traditions to reflect an HIV/AIDS message, and the visual-arts are now being used, too, esp. film and photography.

 

This Freedom Foundation concept seems so well-developed--especially with the peer education message!--that I am hoping to look into how it might be adapted to the African context, and perhaps we can see (here's another one for Ed Magiste!) if the Foundation has an interest in working in Africa, and taking it from there. The international arts-coalition I am forming now will certainly hope to include them in its networking in any case, so many thanks for this excellent article, and keep up the great work (we are all making such beautiful music together!). All best wishes, Janet (the "other" one, haha!)

Concerts for sensitising young people on HIV/AIDS

Here's another idea in the paradigm shiftNote: Forwarded message attached-- Orignal Message --From: "Freedom Foundation"freedom@...> Subject: [] Concerts for sensitising young people on HIV/AIDSGeoff HeavisideFlat 10 Kash Towers93 South West Boag RoadT.Nagar 600017Chennai IndiaCell 9840 097 178AUSTRALIA -Brimbank Community Initiatives Inc5 Brisbane Street, P.O. Box 606SUNSHINE 3020 AustraliaPh: +61 3 9449 1856Cell +61418328278 Visit Aids-Africa athttp://www./group/aids-africaThis group is part of a project to explore how Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) can be used to strengthen and further develop the capacity of organisations responding to the global AIDS crisis to share their experiences, learn from each other, and develop more effective tools in their work.