ASTEP and Africa: the fight against poverty and HIV/AIDS
Over 42 million people are living with HIV/AIDS worldwide. Seventy-four percent of which, are individuals living in sub-Saharan Africa. There are 14,000 new infections every day (95 percent in developing countries). HIV/AIDS is a "disease of young people" with half of the 5 million new infections each year occurring among people ages 15 to 24. Half of all new infections in the United States occur in people 25 years of age or younger.
The UN estimates that, currently, there are 14 million AIDS orphans and that by 2010 there will be 25 million.
In 2006 UNAIDS/WHO in collaboration with the Department of Health published that 5.5 million South Africans were living with HIV (around 11% of the total population). The ASSA predicts that by 2015 that number will exceed 6 million people, by which time around 5.4 million will have died of AIDS.
For the past three years, ASTEP has been using art as a vehicle for effective HIV/AIDS education and raising awareness among today’s youth.
ASTEP began in 2005 by partnering with Ubuntu Education Fund (www.ubuntufund.org), a South African organization dedicated to working with the people of Port Elizabeth to develop quality education and healthy communities in the new South Africa. Ubuntu provides more than 40,000 people, especially orphans and other children made vulnerable by AIDS, poverty and inequality, with life-saving health services and essential educational programming. As part of their comprehensive Health and Empowerment Initiatives, Ubuntu has developed camps to care for orphans and vulnerable children when they are most susceptible to abuse, during school holidays.
ASTEP became a rare component of these camps helping to break down the barriers of racism, confront negative issues pertaining to the diverse population, all the while learning from Ubuntu how to create self-sustaining solutions to assist this community’s serious needs.
ASTEP uses material from plays and musicals that correspond to the issues surrounding these particular children. For example, because of the HIV/AIDS pandemic that is crippling South Africa, ASTEP often references the musical RENT and uses the song ‘Seasons of Love’ as a teaching tool to convey messages of love, value of human life and the struggle to endure, cope and fight the HIV/AIDS virus.
Another special example: In July 2007, ASTEP, in collaboration with Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and Ubuntu Education Fund shared a once-in-a-lifetime experience with children from our collaborative South Africa initiative. The ASTEP 2007 team traveled with 47 children who Ubuntu hand-selected from the townships in Port Elizabeth on a 3-day bus tour to visit Johannesburg for an exciting arts-awareness trip (read more here).
It is with this model in mind that ASTEP would like to broaden its reach to other parts of South Africa, and Africa at large, and bring this experience to other communities in need. ASTEP, in the spirit of its other experiences, will offer these children a nurturing space to learn, create and play through our dynamic performance art programming.
ASTEP is investigating two new pilot programs with our core team in South Africa this fall and will hopefully launch opportunities for our volunteers in 2009.
