Positive Heroes (South Africa)

Dear Stephani,

Thanks so much for your message.

Sport is critical is helping to provide education and a bridge to learning across the world and particularly here in South Africa. There are many awesome projects that do so.

Women form the majority of our board members and stake holders. We work closely with Move! magazine (South Africa's number 1 women's magazine) to convey the stories of women living with HIV, the challenges that they face and how they have responded to them. We don't 'preach' any particular message but rather share testimonies.

Our women's Ultra-marathon team will completely challenge the stero-type of women slowing fading away in silence and disgrace (women as you know already have huge issues including gender discrimination, violence, poverty, lack of education, historical oppression to deal with).

We want to show women living with HIV as the strong capable and enduring people that they are and how that in order to be all that they can they need to manage this condition known as HIV. Our role models will show how they have re-focused on their long term life goals (reaching the end of the marathon) and in order to do that they need to take ARVs, eat well, drink clean water and exercise.

Dealing with HIV is not easy - it is hard work that involves training, education and actively choosing to live (or run the race).

We aim to launch the team within the next few weeks and have been recruiting athletes by running stories in Move! magazine. We are not creating the Positive Heroes - they are already there - we just aim to publicise them and give women hope to balance the huge fear.

Thank you for the heads up on WeOwnTV - I have sent the information to Brooke, who is our creative head. I appreciate your interest and support.

Best regards
Gavin

Hi Aykan,

Thank you for your comments and support.

Absolutely female role models have a huge outreach due to their central role in South African society, the various South African cultures, NGOs and Government.

Women have a decisive role in influencing other members of their families, communities and in particular children.

We seek our role models from as wide a rage of communities, backgrounds and regions as possible. This is particularly important in South Africa as the country is highly diverse (i.e. the 11 official languages) and divided by deeply rooted social inequalities. This diversity has made it very difficult to carry out HIV awareness campaigns that actually influence people’s behaviour.

Best wishes
Gavin

Dear Kevin,

Thank you for your comments and wishes.

Yes we are intending to have events - Move! already have Stokvel events and we are siing how we can arrange events to co-inside with the interests of two other corporate partners who's campaigns we in the process of finalising.

Thanks again for your encouragement.

Gavin

Dear Zama

Thank you for writing and sharing your comments.

Naturally i agree that Evie is a wonderful role model and that her story is incredibly inspiring.

Positive Heroes do not aim to preach but rather to share their stories, elaborating on the challenges that they have faced and how they responded and overcame them. We want women and men to identify with Heroes and by engaging with their stories make their own conclusions and meanings.

We hope that by having our Heroes from as wider a range of communities as possible we will be able to provide someone for everyone to be able to identify with.

The Ultra-marathon team will also provide an educational program providing people with life skills and tools to empower them to life positively setting long and short term life goals and identifying the steps that as you say need to be tackled one at a time.

Thanks again for your support.

Gavin