Sponsored Arts For Education [S.A.F.E.]

"The most important foe in the battle against AIDS remains ignorance."
- The Independent [World AIDS Day 2004]

"Drama in pre-colonial Kenya was not an isolated event. It was functional and part of the life of a people. Drama was an entertainment; it was a moral instruction and was also a strict matter of life and death. This drama was not performed in a building set aside for the purpose. It could be a fireplace, anywhere ­where there was an empty space"  - Ngugi wa Thiong

"S.A.F.E. is doing amazing and important work where it counts ­ helping
people to help themselves."  - Alan Rickman

S.A.F.E. Coast

S.A.F.E. was started by the actor Nick Reding in 2002. It became a Marion Institute Serendipity Project in 2003. Over the past three years S.A.F.E. has been working with members of the Kizingo Arts Troupe and 4th Avenue Theatre Co in Mombasa, Kenya. S.A.F.E. commissioned a play, with the remit that the hero would be HIV positive and that the audience would love him. No mean feat. This, combined with verses about condom use, compassion for the sick, and means of transmission, became a two- hour road show.  S.A.F.E. provided all the equipment required for an instant theatre ­ PA system, generator and rostrum stage, and over three tours the show has now been performed free to almost one hundred thousand people. Many remote places visited had received little or no help in the fight against this disease. There still remains a huge amount of stigma, discrimination and silence surrounding HIV/AIDS, and these shows create debate and discussion ­ an essential step in the battle. They also provide great entertainment. During the show, there are question and answer sessions, and at the end, free condoms and HIV/AIDS health education leaflets are distributed.

"We must not keep the children in darkness. They are coming, and they are seeing and they are learning," ­
-  Safe Coast member

"When my brother was dying he started to cough and I wanted to run away. Then I remembered what you had said in the show and I held him, and I held him when he died, and I say thank you."
- Audience member for Safe Coast

S.A.F.E. Ghetto

After holding open auditions throughout the Nairobi slums, S.A.F.E.  brought together fifteen young actors to form a new theatre company, Safe Ghetto. During a six week workshop a play was devised, aimed particularly at the slums. Focusing on one family’s story, the play tackles the issue of virgin rape as a supposed cure for AIDS, and follows the family as they come to terms with the realities of HIV/AIDS in their slum community. The play premiered on World AIDS Day 2004, and during 2005 was performed free throughout the Nairobi slums as the centerpiece of a new road show.

"When you make the people laugh, they get the message." ­
- Onyango Owino, S.A.F.E. Ghetto Member

"We go right into the slums, we perform in Sheng [slum slang] and tell people the truth."
- Kamau Wa Ndu¹ngu, Safe Ghetto Director

Drama Groups

Due to the huge success and impact the road show has made in the towns and villages where we have performed, S.A.F.E. is developing a network of youth drama groups throughout the coast province to help us collaborate more closely with these communities. Health and drama professionals provide training for the youth groups. This not only empowers local youth, but enables us to work more closely with the medical authorities in disseminating information about a range of other medical issues - i.e. vaccination drives. It also gives us huge insight into particular issues in any given community and helps establish a long-term relationship with them.
 

They also have the advantage of being able to reach the more isolated communities we could never reach with the road show.
 

"In this village, many people have been chased away for being HIV positive. Since your show, everyone is asking if this is right."
­Audience member for  S.A.F.E. Coast

Film Projects

S.A.F.E. has created two short film pieces, which have been passed on free to the national broadcasting stations in Kenya to be shown on public television, and to the UNESCO Institute for Capacity Building in Africa [UNICBA],  where they has been distributed free as supplementary health education tools in primary and secondary schools all over Kiswahili speaking East/Central Africa.

S.A.F.E.'s first film, 'KandAanda ['Football' - wear your boots!] was a short piece that promoted condom use. Our second piece "Huruma", commissioned by UNICBA, was longer and more complex, and centered on the theme of compassion. In Kenya, the stigma attached to HIV/AIDS is such that those infected with the disease are often chased out of their hometowns and villages by their own families. "Huruma" was extremely successful at teaching tens of thousands in villages all over the Kenyan countryside how HIV/AIDS can and cannot be spread, and encouraged compassion for friends and neighbors who were sufferers.

Fernando Merielles, director of the acclaimed "City of God"  asked S.A.F.E. to perform a stage version of our film "Huruma" in Kibera slum to open his new film "The Constant Gardener."

Sponsored Arts For Education [S.A.F.E.]
P.O. Box 492
Abingdon
OX14 4WW
United Kingdom

email:  hello@safekenya.org
website:  www.safekenya.org