South Africa is one of the countries in the world with most HIV/AIDS. The failure of the government is clear and the life expectancy has dropped from 63 years 1992 to 45 years 2004. His is of cause very bad.

But in recent year, the people of South Africa have been working very hard to make a change. And more people then ever have access to treatment and information how to protect against HIV.

One of the latest projects is cooperation between South Africa and Sweden, the Point of View”-project.

“Point of View is a project established in collaboration with outreach institutions in Sweden and South Africa. Our main aim is to educate youth on Sexual Health, reproduction and youth culture. We utilize popular youth culture as a means of successfully educating youth through creative means that is relative and interesting to them. This project involves the performing arts as a platform for education.”

I like the methods and think they have a good chance to make some change, because they are young and know the methods to reach the young people.

The two documentaries made for the project will be released April 27th, I will be there. Make time to check their website at www.povproject.com.

Links
Forum Syd is the institution that supported the project
Brown Paper Studios is the project partner in South Africa
Streets is the project partner in Sweden

This summer, music superstar Bono will remake the lifestyle magazine Vanity Fairs summer issue. The magazine will focus on Africa and the good stories, of course an interesting project. Bono want to show the other side of Africa, and believes, just like me, that more people should be active if they only saw that the world is getting better every day.

This is not Bonos first job as an editor, last summer; he remade the British newspaper The Independent to focus on the global south in an action for change.

The magazine will be out in late June, buy it and feel the inspiration to change the world!

Please check www.vanityfair.com for more information.

The French election in going to be held on Sunday. And some good news comes from the poor suburbs of the big cities. From the big demonstrations and fights with the police during 2005 and 2006 a new movement have been rising, and this year, 500 000 more persons from the suburbs are registered to vote.

One of the candidates, Nicolas Sarkozy, is the person that became the face of the French governments total failure to handle the demonstrations. The called the frustrated youths “scum” and that they were going to “get rid of them”.

Let’s hope that the election on Sunday will be determined by the voices from the suburbs, they need it more then ever. Let´s hope to see a women from Senegal as president, Ségolène Royal.

My plan for a long time, Tellus Media Network, will start on May 3rd. It´s an open network of media, makers, artists, activists and idealists with the aim to show the alternative view of the world.

We are tired of the established medias picture of the world beyond Western Europe and North America to be either war loving terrorists or victims that will need our help. We will show a world full of development, creativity, engagement and love. Our news will be important and true, but from the other perspective.

On May 3 we will open our web-based magazine TellUs, a citizen journalism project where we invite all the people of the world to write about the good stories in their towns, countries or interests. After the summer we will publish the printed Tellus Magazine, with in depth stories of development and change around the world. Our correspondents will search for the most inspiring and important stories to create the most important magazine in the world.

You can order your subcribtion of Tellus Magazine already, we got two types of lubrications with different values, please click here to learn more.

If you want to contribute to TellUs Magazine, please visit www.tellusmedia.net and become a member for free. Before the opening on May 3 you will get the information how to contribute.

My name is Jonas Eriksson, often called Joney. I’m 25-year-old activist with a very clear focus. I’m going to make the world equal and sustainable. During the last year I’ve been thinking what we need to do to make a better world, and it’s really hard. And I don’t know exactly what to do, but I know some ways to start. So this is the first step of many.

The aim of this blog is to test ideas, give comments and set the focus on important issues around the world. It will follow me around the world; have guest writers and much more.

You will se a lot of me during the next month, so please come back to the blog to be the first to see what’s going on.

The most important day of the year in coming up. It’s July 7 and it will mark half time in the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) process. The MDG are the most ambitiousdeclaration ever, signed by all the members of the UN with the aim to reduce poverty and make a better world.

But the development today, we will not reach most of the goals before 2015 which is a failure beyond failures.

It’s going to be a lot of events on the day; Live Earth is five large concerts in different parts of the world to support the work against global warming,

So for me, I hope the 07/07/07 will be a wake up call for me, you, our governments, companies and organizations to work even harder to reach the goals. And you can make the day a reminder to many people.

• Write or call to your local newspaper, radio or television to make a story about it.
• Write or call to your politicians to hear what they are doing to achieve the MDG:s.
• Arrange a event, a seminar, a demonstration, a
• Make a donation to you favorite organization; they will need money to build a better world.

I will write a few guides for how you reach the media and the politicians in the best possible way. Just give me a few weeks and I will publish them here. If you know anyone that got some good guides, please e-mail me so we don’t need to do the work twice.