Freeplay Foundation

The Freeplay Foundation is committed to promoting the importance of radio as a vital communication medium in the developing world. We believe that, like education, access to information is a fundamental human right.

Africa is home to an estimated 42 million orphans - the poorest of the poor. The least likely to have access to radio information. These communities are the focus of our work.

To help vulnerable people transform their lives using sustainable, self-sufficient and environmentally friendly technologies. We are committed to act as stewards of the environment to make clean energy technologies available to those in need.

AIDS has orphaned an estimated 12 million children in Africa. Altogether, 42 million African children are orphaned from a number of causes. Faced with persistent poverty and a dearth of good, affordable and accessible education, millions of children are out of school and potentially at risk of being drawn into low-paying, dangerous employment and are vulnerable to exploitation and child trafficking.

Against this backdrop, the Freeplay Foundation created Radios for Education in Africa Project (REAP) to provide self powered Lifeline radios to ensure that the most vulnerable children have access, not only to education that will help them build a future but to vital health information on Aids and malaria which could save their lives.

In rural communities without electricity and where there is no money to buy batteries, which are hard to come by, the Lifeline radio, which needs no batteries or electricity, solves the problem of access. As many as forty children can gather together at informal classes and learn. Children without parents, bringing up other children learn essential survival skills--advice on growing food, how to boil water before drinking it--and learn about AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

The Freeplay Foundation works with large international agencies, as well as local NG0s to distribute radios to those that are most in need. Since it was launched, in 2003, 120,000 self-powered Lifeline radios have reached an estimated 2.5 million listeners. Reports from our projects in Zambia and Tanzania tell us that children learning by radio are getting higher marks than those in formal schools. In hundreds of distributions we have observed the Lifeline radio has the greatest impact on vulnerable children. A radio, providing soap operas, news bulletins and practical information to help them survive, changes lives for the better.

Kristine Pearson

Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Zambia, Uganda

71 Gloucester Place

London, W1U 8JW

United Kingdom

Phone: (+44) 207 9355350

www.freeplayfoundation.org

EIN: 13-4133423