By Julienne Munyaneza, Programme Manager for HIV and Ecumenical Relations, WACC

Beginning July 1st WACC and the Christian Council of Ghana (CCG) embarked on a 3-year project supported by the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DFID). This is a significant accomplishment in WACC’s response to HIV/AIDS-related stigma and discrimination.

The initiative emerged as a result of close consultations between WACC and CCG during a staff visit to Ghana in 2005. That visit included consultations with CCG’s partners in Ghana, the Ghana AIDS Commission (GAC), and the Ecumenical HIV/AIDS Initiative in Africa (EHAIA).

WACC partner SAT-7 breaks new ground in Arab media

By Mette Schmidt, Sat 7

One hour is not enough!

This is the name of a weekly talk show programme aired live from Beirut every Sunday evening by the Arabic satellite TV-channel SAT-7 for the last six months. The programme has been focussing on the rights of disabled persons to education, work and political participation. And the title is to be taken quite literally: The length of the show had to be extended from 60 to 75 minutes!

By Philip Lee, Deputy Director of Programmes, WACC.

Working in the city of Medellín, Colombia, the Sumapaz Foundation is an NGO dedicated to promoting social development for excluded and/or impoverished sectors of society. It also advocates and defends human rights by means of organizational, training and management initiatives.

In 2007 WACC supported Sumapaz to organize a series of training workshops for 30 women living in situations of vulnerability who are active members of grassroots social organizations. They tackled themes related to communication rights and ways of making known the challenges such groups face, problems and potential solutions.

By María Teresa Aguirre; Programme Manager, WACC

A communication workshop in Lebanon sponsored by WACC almost two years ago has yielded unforeseen benefits. Members of the Helwan Association for Community Development (‘Bashayer’)- in partnership with Appropriate Communication Techniques for Development (ACT) – are half way to completing a year- long monitoring of images of violence against women in two of Cairo’s most important daily newspapers.

By Women’s Media Watch, Jamaica

The World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) in partnership with Women’s Media Watch (WMW) held a 3-day Regional Training Workshop on Gender and Media Advocacy, 10 to 12 April, 2008, in Kingston, Jamaica. The event brought together civil society as well as some media from 11 Caribbean countries. The regional delegates developed a Caribbean Action Plan for Gender & Media Advocacy.

By Philip Lee, Deputy Director of Programmes, WACC.

More than one hundred years of silent oppression scar the coal-mining region of Coahuila State, in the north-east of Mexico. Recently, with support from WACC, a local NGO called Didaxis has filmed some of the women who have been widowed and left to fend for themselves after mining accidents killed their husbands.

On 19 February 2006, shaft 8 of the Pasta de Conchos mine exploded, leaving 65 miners trapped below ground. The authorities decided to seal the mine without recovering the bodies. Their widows protested, but two years later still nothing had been done and the company closed the mine for good.

Julienne Munyaneza, Pogramme manager, WACC

“Changing attitudes towards intellectual disability remains a big issue in the Arab world”, says Wimco Ester, the Managing Director of MediaHouse (MH), a WACC partner based in Cairo, Egypt.

In 2007, MediaHouse embarked on a documentary initiative dubbed “Early Start” to challenge discriminatory attitudes towards children who are intellectually disabled and their families. MediaHouse produced a series of 12 video programmes to raise awareness on the difficulties faced by children and young people with learning disabilities and to show the importance of early intervention. MH used an interactive methodology where the filming crew, while preparing and shooting, discussed the common misunderstandings and wrong ideas they had about these issues before meeting with disabled children and their families.

By María Teresa Aguirre; Programme Manager, WACC

The inhabitants of Mugogo, a village situated some 2,000 kilometres from Kinshasa, capital city of the Democratic Republic of Congo, will long remember 4 January 2008 as a very special day in the life of their community.That was the day when the first broadcast of Radio Bubusa hit the air. An initiative of a group of rural women, the idea of the radio station was first mooted towards the end of 2003, and now, in 2008 and with the support of a grant from WACC, the idea finally came to fruition. The first broadcast surprised more than one listener with its unique blend of traditional songs interspersed with a voice that announced in Mashi (a local dialect) the name of the station and the place it was coming from: Radio Bubusa, broadcasting from Mugogo.

Radio Bosco FM 89.9, celebrated its third anniversary of community broadcasting on 2nd March, 2008, on the plains of Guadalcanal, in the Solomon Islands. Radio BOSCO is supported by WACC, the Salesians of Don Bosco, Catholic Communications Solomons, the Community Sector Programme, SIGNIS, and many other friends and well wishers. Young people from the community are engaged in running Radio Bosco FM, the first community radio in the Solomons.

A clip from Six floors to hell.

By Julienne Munyaneza, Programme Manager

Video 48, the audio-visual wing of Hanitzotz Publishing House, a partner of WACC in Jerusalem, Israel, committed to bridging the gap between Arabs and Jews, fighting for the recognition of Arab Israeli’s rights, has just released/produced a powerful film “Six Floors to Hell”.

It was produced thanks to the financial support of WACC and its German partner, Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst (EED), in Bonn, Germany.