a lot of great people have donated towards this trip. I will be blogging about this trip and my crazy life in audio here periodically. here is the mission statement for the upcoming session in South Africa:
TRIAD TRUST MEDIA DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM
There are 5.7 million people living with HIV/AIDS in southern Africa. South Africa’s rural Nkomazi region is home to the population with the world’s highest prevalence of HIV. 50% of the population over the age of 15 is living with HIV. Half the population is under the age of 18. With this precarious balance of demographics, orphans and vulnerable children are not only growing up amidst the spectre of HIV/AIDS, they are growing up without role models. TRIAD’s mission is to change that. Through innovative HIV and life skills education programming, TRIAD identifies and trains local leaders to create and run sustainable arts, media, and sports-based HIV and life skills education programs for these vulnerable children.
At the heart of TRIAD’s initiatives is the unique ImprovED program. TRIAD’s Performing Arts staff trains a troupe of local actors, musicians, and Medical Educators to implement an age-appropriate and community-tailored program. By working within schools and in after-school groups over an 8-week period, the troupe acts as Performance Facilitators and introduces information each week with songs, improvisational role playing, discussion, and finally a collaborative performance scene. The regular presence of the troupe members creates a comfort and trust amongst the youth that only comes with consistency– something too many of these children don’t have elsewhere.
From April 3 through April 13, Joel Hamilton and Francisco Botero will be working with The TRIAD Trust in the Nkomazi region of South Africa. Musician Marika Hughes is a long-time supporter of and volunteer with TRIAD, having worked with community members on the ground several times. Her work with these troupe members is an integral reason for TRIAD’s success to date. In 2009, Marika shared with Joel her experiences with TRIAD and its community-based partners in Africa. Joel immediately contacted TRIAD to share ideas about how he could help TRIAD and its local stakeholders achieve their mission of reducing the transmission of HIV/AIDS by lending his expertise as a recording engineer and producer.
Joel and Francisco will be working alongside Marika and Jack Judson, TRIAD’s Director of Arts Programming, Chloe Lewis, TRIAD’s Director of Educational Programming, the ImprovED troupe, and hundreds of young program participants. Joel and Francisco will be recording songs that are part of the ImprovED curriculum, spoken-word pieces composed by program participants, and interviews with community members. Hopefully they will be donating equipment to the local stakeholders, too.
The goal of Joel and Francisco’s visit is four-fold:
- To document the program for educational purposes so ImprovED methods can be shared with other communities
- To create a marketable set of tracks for a record to be sold to raise funds to support these educational initiatives
- To train the community-based ImprovED troupe members to use basic recording techniques so they can continue to document the progress and success of ImprovED on their own
- To train the ImprovED troupe members to use basic recording techniques as an income-generating business opportunity to fund the ImprovED program
Local stakeholders in the ImprovED program need the unique expertise that Joel will bring. TRIAD is looking forward to introducing him and Francisco to the community.
Brooke Wurst
Founder and Executive Director
The TRIAD Trust
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