Suriname Project Inspired by South African Project

I am the director of Projekta, an organization regarded as one of Suriname's leading NGO's in the fields of gender, participatory processes and community development. One of the secret weapons that have helped us achieve this status is the Communication Initiative. We are subscribers to and faithful visitors of their website. We rely heavily on the background information provided; we love the Drum Beat, and those quirky polls and facts we get in our mailbox each week.

I have also been making videos and theater before I had even heard of such a thing as development communication. So yes, we do that too.

And it is when these two worlds can come together that I feel most blessed.

Almost four years ago we were introduced by PAHO-Suriname to a phenomenon from across the world: Soul City. It was love at first viewing. We studied Soul City, also through the Comminit-website, we visited their production facilities in Johannesburg, and I slept with their manuals next to me. It was quite uncomfortable.

The result was Wan Lobi Tori, a Love Story. In the year since it was first broadcast Wan Lobi Tori has traveled to many countries within the Caribbean, winning over audiences everywhere. We even won the Carec Caribbean Media Award for alternative media story on HIV/AIDS.

But the biggest achievement, we feel, is when people in the English speaking Caribbean watch this Dutch spoken Surinamese movie and say: this is just like us here, in Guyana, or Trinidad, or Barbados. Much like we watched Soul City, and Soul Buddyz and said: wow, this is just like Suriname.

Like Soul City, Wan Lobi Tori is proving that a good story transcends borders, cultures and languages. It confirms that the way people look at HIV, and deal with it in their lives is almost universal. The success had also opened new perspectives: we now dream of a pan-Caribbean edutainment series, linking story lines across borders, emphasizing Caribbean unity, and making better use of scarce resources. Learning again from the communication initiative we aim to be regional forces, local choices, telling universal stories.