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Global
Updates

The Winter/Summer Institute
 


 


WSI reconvenes every two years,
with new students taking part each session, to build an on-going momentum. During the intervening period the four participating schools carry out activities related to the overall goals of the Institute.

Here's what's been happening:

 
LESOTHO:

In the 20 months since WSI 2006, the National University of Lesotho contingent and its successors haven't stopped performing Dance Me to the End of Love. They've performed the show on campus regularly, and were featured at both World HIV/AIDS Day and UN Day in Lesotho's capital, Maseru.

They also took the show to the Intervarsity Games in Swaziland, and, most recently, participated in the Southern African Development Community Artists AIDS Festival in Harare, Zimbabwe.

In addition, in the mountains of Malealea the village women who worked with WSI in 2006 formed a theatre group they call Khalemang Bohlasoa (Eradicate Negligence), which has been creating and performing issue-based plays for surrounding villages. They will work with WSI again in 2008.

NEW YORK:

At Empire State College, State University of New York, a weekend Residency in Theatre for Development was led by student participants from WSI 2006 and attended by over 50 people, including college students from around New York state, HIV/AIDS educators, theatre practitioners and arts educators.

Students also gave presentations at the Student All-College Meeting, performed at UNAIDS Day and worked with nurses studying community health.

In addition, several students are applying what they learned in Africa to other endeavors.

One has initiated a project in Argentina. He writes "My decision to launch Waste-for-Life and work with cartonero cooperatives in Buenos Aires was a direct result of my participation in WSI 2006. The Lesotho experience taught me that ... you actually can bridge cultures and stratifications to create something that benefits people most at risk."

Another began working with teenage girls in the Bronx on HIV/AIDS prevention – the group just initiated a "sneaker drive" to send shoes to Malealea communities. Another student will return to Lesotho in 2008 as a WSI faculty intern.

SOUTH AFRICA:

At the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), WSI 2006 students are using the work as an element of their teaching.

As music educators, they have added drama as another tool in the creative kit each takes into the field, some to townships without electricity or running water.

UK:

The University of Sunderland's Nigel Watson returned to Lesotho in June 2007 with a fresh group of British students to conduct workshops and work with students from NUL's Dance Me team at an orphanage in Maseru.

WSI 2006 participants have returned to Africa to do a variety of projects: one to work in land and animal conservation in Namibia; and one to facilitate the connection with Wits.