The participants from around the world gathering the week of November 17th in New York present an opportunity to achieve a major breakthrough in harnessing the power of entertainment to the struggle against HIV/AIDS.

The pandemic is global. The effort must be global. We must make maximum efforts to reach out to all who have a piece of the money, talent and structure needed to be effective in realizing the vast potential of entertainment to deal with issues such as stigma, the status of women and behavioral challenges. This is why the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health has joined PCI as co-presenter. It has led to the association with CONGO and the UNFPA. Understanding the great promise in unleashing the power of entertainment has convinced the BBC World Trust, UN Foundation, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Communications and the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences to join us in this effort.

In the past, PCI has worked principally with the serial drama community in encouraging that creative community to consider how to use the magic of story telling to change attitudes and behavior on health and social issues. Although aimed at the domestic market, the success of the seven American soap summits has begun to have an international influence. In June of 2003, the first African Soap Summit was held in Nairobi, underwritten by the Ford Foundation. For a week more than one hundred writers, producers, executives, government officials and others heard presentations, engaged in panel discussions, exchanged information and developed a sense of community that led to the proclamation attached.

PCI, along with international partners, is exploring the possibility of presenting the first India Soap Summit. We are in the process of creating an award for achievement in providing health messages through popular dramas.

With the growing awareness internationally of the critical role entertainment can play, PCI this year has widened the scope of the summit to include a much larger spectrum of the creative teams who can bring their talents to bear on HIV/AIDS. Thus the new time frame of two weeks and the ingathering of those producers and writers and stars currently working on dramatic series dealing with HIV/AIDS and other health and social issues in India, Afghanistan, Kenya, China and South Africa.

On Tuesday, November 18th, at Columbia University, we will bring together key players from the worlds of entertainment, public health, business, advertising and the political and UN communities to learn how and why entertainment programming is impacting the cultural and social aspects of AIDS. In the afternoon breakout sessions, we hope that the programs in Africa and Asia will find support that will enable them to sustain their current programming and strike out in new directions. We expect that representatives from the Ad Council of America and members of the international business community such as Coca Cola and Proctor & Gamble will attend along with the entertainment and public health communities.

During the week, PCI is planning a meeting with Johns Hopkins, the BBC World Trust, Soul City and others to establish a cooperative relationship that will encourage a more effective use of resources. We envision PCI engaged in training BBC personnel before they set out to produce programs in Africa. We hope that Johns Hopkins can join us in Peru in extending the outreach of a new series there. At our next African Soap Summit we foresee presentations by Soul City on its experience in producing drama incorporating HIV/AIDS story lines.

The panel discussion, later in the week, featuring our overseas guests that will be hosted by the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences will insure that a large number of executives and producers from around the world, in New York for the International EMMY Awards the next evening, will hear and see the work of our guests.

When the two-week project comes ends, we expect the information absorbed, ideas exchanged and new associations and partnerships arrived at will ramify for years to come. The writers, producers and performers from abroad will discover that they are a part of a vital worldwide brotherhood. The entertainment experts will be compellingly reminded of the great power and responsibility that is theirs. The business community will learn that the medium for advertising can become the agency for change.

For inquiries contact Sonny Fox at:

Population Communications International, U.S. Programs
4400 Coldwater Canyon Avenue. Suite 220
Studio City, CA 91604
Tel. (818) 487-1955
e-mail: sfox@population.org

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