Nalamdana

Nalamdana uses the following communication methods to provide knowledge about health to semi-literate and illiterate audiences: response-driven participatory street theatre, interactive games and puzzles, audio and video cassettes, television films, small group workshops, and television serials.

For example, some of their recorded work includes:

• Audio / CDs including easy-to-sing songs in Tamil, created by girls, for girls, on personal hygiene, nutrition, right to education, and the importance of good parenting.
• Games, including jigsaw puzzles on HIV protection.
• Penin Perumai Flip Chart designed and drawn by adolescents who are part of Nalamdana's Youth Education and Leadership Program to explain the facts about puberty and reproduction to young adults and adolescents.
• Video / DVDs on the subjects of alcoholism, child abuse, and HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment, and support.

Nalamdana's work includes collaborative street plays on a variety of health issues. A typical Nalamdana show begins and ends with an evaluation. Play scripts and materials are tested in the field - in the community where they will be used. "Weeks before the play is enacted, a pre play survey records current knowledge levels and misconceptions about the relevant health issue in the community. Information about social taboos, cultural mores and habits is collated. This survey also serves as a baseline for knowledge, attitudes and perceptions.

This information is also woven into the play: characters speak and dress the way the community does; the story is about people like them, the situations on stage mirror their daily lives and common domestic problems are resolved....

There is a post play interactive session - discussion, arguments, questions and a post play survey - and Nalamdana counsellors go back a day or two later to complete the follow up and hold small group discussions about the issues raised in the play...."

HIV/AIDS, Health, Children, Youth, Education.

Nalamdana has reached more than half a million people through street theatre and more through other media like teledramas, interactive media, and print. In ten years, they have covered more than 50 villages in Tamil Nadu and about 500 inner city slums in Chennai. Nalamdana has evolved its own theatre style that draws on the popular stage and film traditions of Tamil Nadu. The audience is mixed - on average about 750 men, women and children, ranging in age from four to seventy five, attend a street play.

For a sample of Nalamdana's work:

And more about Nalamdana: