of a red piano on their hands – but also asked questions and wanted to know more about HIV in Russia and in the world.

As a highlight of their day, the most active volunteers were invit-ed to take VIP seats at the con-cert, together with the celebrities

Vladimir Pozner and Ivan Urgant. Judging by the excited stories our

colleagues shared after the concert, the show was a big success. And it’s a pleasure to think that we can take some credit for it!

Elton4life. That says it all!

Newsletter #5, October-December, 2009

On 7 October 2009 a long-awaited Elton John’s concert took place in Moscow. Elton John is a well-known supporter of HIV/AIDS programmes, so dance4life was one of the welcome guests at the event. The majority of adult representatives of the di-verse concert audience were not inspired by our ac-tivity during the concert, but some people were quite appreciative and eager to communicate. Unfortu-nately, Russia’s adult population is often less aware about socially significant diseases than young peo-ple: the latter are ready to learn more, analyse new information and change behaviours, whereas the older generation shows resistance and doesn’t really want to hear about alternative viewpoints or change their hardened beliefs.

The responsive part of the audience, however, not only took part in our activities – came to the informa-tion booth, donated for projects or took part in our body-art initiative and walked away with a picture

International Conference ‘Improving effective-ness of social advertisement in Russia’ was held in the Moscow House of Cinema. The Conference, held on 8 and 9 October, was initiated by the NGO Coalition on the Development of Social Advertisement in Rus-sia. The FOCUS-MEDIA Foundation (holder of the d4l concept in Russia) was one of the co-organisers of the event.

In 26–27 October 2009, an annual meeting was held for all dance4life project coordinators in Russia. The meeting took place at the office of ‘Eli Lilly’, our partner and donor. The atmosphere of the gathering was open and warm largely due to its location: the meeting was held in a very cosy room of the Mos-cow-City Business Centre that was provided free-of-charge! The company’s staff patiently and amiably ‘endured’ our emotional discussions and sharing of experience through presentations, videos and pic-tures.

Among the participants was Katinka Lansink, Man-ager of dance4life Int. (Russia is one of the countries that she coordinates as part of the project). It was very useful to hear welcoming messages from Dout-zen Kroes , Will.i.am (The Black Eyed Peas ) and other international ambassadors, as well as to see new vid-eos and photos – all these materials inspired the par-ticipants to think about creating their own product that would be as impressive, fascinating and enter-taining as the initiatives already held in other places.

International conferences – our area of expertise

The aim of the conference was to develop uni-fied quality standards and a conceptually new ap-proach to social advertisement, as well as to share technologies that help create and promote quality social products.

The dance4life drill performed by the second-to-none team of volunteers gave a powerful start to the conference, symbolising support and integrity with all important social projects in Moscow and Russia.

Inter-regional meeting of project coordinators at a bird’s eye view location

As part of the Youth Village Y-PEER network at the Eastern European and Central Asian AIDS Confer-ence (EECAAC), the project held an interactive ses-sion with goodwill ambassadors. The Youth Village vol-unteers and guests were welcomed by a well-known TV journalist Vladimir Pozner, DJ Feel, an HIV-positive activist Svetlana Izambayeva and a PR Director of the Radio ‘Europe+’ branch in Volgograd Vladimir Umnov. This was one of the most popular events on the agenda of the Youth Village, and its success was tremendous.

A small room with dance4life info-displays, flags and banners was full with people. The presenters – Vladimir Pozner, Svetlana with a baby on her lap, DJ Feel, who came just for an hour before departing to London’s ‘best DJs of the world’ party, and Vladimir Umnov awaiting his debut as a goodwill ambassador in Volgograd – sat on a sofa facing the sessions’ par-ticipants. It was impressive that the goodwill ambas-sadors found time in their busy schedules to take part in this event, but even more impressive was WHAT they were talking about and HOW they shared emotions. Without any instructions from our side, they sincerely spoke about the importance of the involvement of celebrities in tackling the acute social problems. The session was very informal. Vladimir Pozner started the conversation with the discussion of issues that were important for everyone: who are goodwill ambassa-dors, what is their input in the fight with HIV, how can celebrities impact the work of governmental struc-tures in HIV prevention, what is the procedure for in-volving ambassadors and working with them.

DJ Feel, in his turn, shared his impressions about the shooting of a video clip for the dance4life track recorded together with Vladimir Pozner, talked about

the role of the club culture and its influence on young people, discussed the input that musicians could bring into the fight with the HIV epidemic.

Svetlana Izambayeva shared her own experience of living with HIV and highlighted legal issues that HIV-positive people face in Russia.

Vladimir Umnov, as a representative of the new dance4life group of regional ambassadors, gave ex-amples of activities to be initiated and implemented as a joint effort of regional teams and the ambassa-dors. It’s significant that the Russian goodwill ambas-sadors are ready to provide financial support to so-cial projects by donating income from their concerts, parties and sales.

These very different, very captivating stories, as well as sharing of precious experience and opinions made up for an intense session and brought the re-lations with the dance4life project ambassadors to a new level of cooperation. We call it a real success!

EECAAC sessions: new experience, successful experience

Another important session, the visitors were in-terested in - “Club subculture and social project” -, opened a new approach of disseminating informa-tion about health of young people.

‘Music is the universal language of mankind’, said the American poet Henry Longfellow

This approach is based on quite a trivial concept: in an atmosphere where they feel engaged, free and ready to communicate, young people are more ready to receive reliable information about ways to protect their health. They take part in such activities as special actions, body art with project logos, etc.

The presentation highlighted best practices of cooperation between NGOs and organisers of club events – people whose paths seldom cross, but only at the first sight! For example, during the Electronic Music Festival ‘TSEKH’ the project reached around 5000 people.

On 28 October 2009 a meeting of regional coor-dinators and project partners was held in a Starbucks café at Pokrovka Street in Moscow. Appetising snacks, a homelike room provided for free by the Starbucks administration, and, of course, our common goal made the evening warm, fruitful and very friendly. The partners shared successes and achievements in their regions and discussed ideas about the future de-velopment of dance4life. Also, the new video clip of the Heart Connection Tour for schools was presented to the participants.

The organisers paid special attention to acknowledging successes in each region of Russia. Every regional team was awarded with prizes (maracas and megaphones) that will be very useful for their promotional public events. Later in the evening, all members of the Russian dance4life team performed a simple but dy-

namic dance that they actually practiced only one day before the meeting. And ‘for dessert’ everyone enjoyed Bulat Okudzhava guitar songs performed by Evgenia Alexeeva, Director or FOCUS-MEDIA Foundation.

Partner event: dance4life and Starbucks are now friends!

Every year on 1 December every dance4life project region commemorates World AIDS Day (WAD). On that day, profile organisations implement new ideas, coming up with something innovative, unusual and aiming for the attention of as many peo-ple as possible. The tireless Moscow team consisting of three people managed to conduct events in four different locations simultaneously. Impossible? On the contrary: with the help of numerous volunteers and project supporters those inspiring events were successfully held, and it all started in Moscow State University of Geodesy and Cartography (a study place of Kristina Likhanova, our all-time volunteers’ coordinator) together with our new friends from The

Condom Project, who came to Moscow, incidentally heard about us and arranged a meeting. On 1 De-cember we held joint World AIDS Day events in the University and later in the cinema ‘35 mm’ where a charity featuring of the HIV/AIDS film ‘Hoy me des-perté’ was organised.

The Condom Project works to de-stigmatise con-doms, increase their use and break down cultural bar-riers and myths about condoms. These guys are very creative in showing that a condom is a funny, funky, fashionable and even beautiful thing (it can be used as an accessory!). For example, many participants of the event got badges made from this strategic prod-uct which they pinned to their bags, scarves and

sweaters. This funny badge can be made in about one minute: you just need some coloured paper, scis-sors, a scotch tape, a pin and, of course, a condom. Flavour this with your good mood and a sense of hu-mour, and the cheerful accessory is ready!

Parallel to these events ran other activities: in the Plekhanov’s Russian Economy Academy our long-standing and dear partners from ROST gave out infor-mational brochures, demonstrated video clips about the project and provided every student with a badge for such a memorable day; while in the ‘Evropeisky’ mall in Moscow our team of volunteers, together with the partners from ‘EVROKOM-MED’, offered rapid HIV saliva testing to those who were interested: this alter-native testing technique identifies the virus in 20 min-utes.

1 December: celebrating achievements

OrenburgThe show-launch of the d4l project in Orenburg

was held in the State Teacher’s Training University (80 first-year students of the Department for Physics and Mathematics took part). The project’s goodwill ambassadors from the Creative Association Ma Sta Family also participated in the event. This is a group of professional breakdance, hip-hop and other dancers, and at the launch they performed their new drill ‘for life and for love’. The participants gen-erated so much power from that dance, that the Heart Connection Tour that followed was an amaz-ingly lively and inspiring event, after which all active students were awarded with red ribbons and stickers produced for that day (with the slogan ‘Don’t play: live!’). It was one of the most outstanding dance4life launches in Orenburg!

1 December in other dance4life regions

Ulan-UdeVolunteers from the Ulan-Ude AIDS Centre dis-

tributed red ribbons, held quizzes and other events among university students and passers-by in the streets. During the HIV/AIDS quiz, the people who came up with the right answers were rewarded with prizes, and those answering incorrectly were offered an HIV counselling session. Moreover, the streets of Ulan-Ude saw a flash mob called ‘The Dancing Troop Force’: volunteers performed the international dance against HIV/AIDS, distributed red ribbons and informational materials.

Gorno-AltaiskOn 1 December 2009, volunteers from the ‘Orion’

Non-Profit Partnership held simultaneous events in three buildings of the Gorno-Altaisk State University to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS among the youth. In the evening, a theatre performance and a d4l Heart Connection Tour were held for children in the Republi-can Centre for Extended Education for Children.

The events were very successful: the students and even some of the teachers actively participated and later asked to conduct separate HIV trainings in their schools. The participants were presented with memo-rable notebooks with information about HIV/AIDS and the symbols of WAD. The notebook had been issued by the University specifically for the World AIDS Day.

DJ Feel – ambassador for the international move-ment dance4life and, according to DJ MAG 2009, one of the top 30 world DJs and producers – issued a single ‘DJ Feel feat. Volmix – dance4life’ that was cre-ated specifically to support our project and released by the European record label ‘SPINNIN’.

The sales of the single have started at the biggest global internet-shop BEATPORT.COM. The track was already followed by a re-mix by Ronski Speed and, according to DJ MAG, supported by the best DJs of the world – Armin van Buuren in his show ‘A State of Trance’ and dj Tiesto.

The profit gathered from the sales of this hymn will be transferred to support the dance4life project in Russia. In summer 2009 the leading musical TV sta-tions and more than 80 radio stations in Russia broad-cast the single.

TogliattiFor the World AIDS Day, a very powerful and emo-

tional project launch took place in Togliatti State Uni-versity (TSU). The event multiplied the number of the project’s volunteers and supporters. Among the TSU activities were a very interesting photo exhibition of posters, a display of the project’s video clips and a broadcast of HIV films. Around 2000 students had the opportunity to receive life-saving information about HIV from project volunteers. The central point of the event was a rock concert held on 3 December in TSU devoted to the memory of those who died from AIDS. The concert attracted more than 280 people.

Togliatti saw many WAD events, and all of them were vibrant, entertaining and very needed, as they attracted people’s attention to HIV-related issues and encouraged them to think about their health and health of their loved ones.

TomskVarious public awareness activities were held

for the World AIDS Day by the Tomsk Charity Public Foundation ‘Sibir-SPID-Pomosch’ together with the Centre for Medical Prevention, a volunteer service ‘Nash Format’ and volunteers from the Youth Centre ‘Zvezdochka’. On that day and during the week that followed, volunteers distributed HIV prevention ma-terials and invited people to receive counselling on the issues they were interested in. Dance4life in Tomsk also held bright and exiting events: a disco for project volunteers, a d4l party and many other activities.

Similar actions were held in other project regions: from Sochi to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk!

We got a New Year present as well!

Authors: Valentina Agafonova, Maria Krauze

FOCUS-MEDIA Foundation16 Polessky proezd, building 1, office 221

125367 Moscow, Russia

Tel.: 276-11-23/24/25/26

www.dance4life.ru

The dance4life project won the contest ‘Socially active media’ and will receive support to promote the project’s brand.

Social advertisement in the mass media is currently a

Internet, glossy magazines and news in every manifestation: here we come!

privilege of the few: only several prominent NGOs have their social adverts in magazines, on radio and TV. Unfortunately, not every NGO, even those providing effective services of high quality, has access to free social advertisement or resources to develop professional

promotional products. To change this, CAF-Russia announced a

competition to promote socially significant initiatives. As part of this project, in February-March dance4life will receive support for its informational campaign through the involvement of media and creative agencies.

In the next issue:

Training for the Moscow team: lessons learned

International meeting in Amsterdam

World TB Day: for the first time on such a scale

And much more …

Tatyana Evlampieva, manager of dance4life-Russia, was invited to take part in the ‘Volunteer of the Year’ competition as an expert assessing youth projects. The competition was held by the Federal Agency on Youth Policy.

Three non-stop days the Expert Commission as-sessed youth initiatives from all over Russia, selecting the strongest. One of the ‘invited stars’ of the compe-tition was Alex Vorobyov, the youngest and ‘naugh-tiest’ of dance4life ambassadors. Alex talked about his commitment to the project and its significance, and answered questions raised by volunteers on vari-ous social issues, such as helping orphans and stray animals.

Dance4life was not just a guest at this competition – it brought along its en-ergy and spirit, as the atmosphere there was quite intense and serious. Banner photo sessions, cre-ating badges and many other activities made the dance4life info-booth ‘shat-ter’, which was very pleasant for us.

And although some things went wrong and some took more time than planned, everyone left satisfied and inspired for future work.

dance4life – special guest at the ‘Volunteer of the Year’