During the past few days I had the pleasure of attending the 5th World Summit on Media for Children, which took place in Sandton. As I am trying to get Marang House more involved with public awareness activities and as I have a little bit of a background in the media industry, I thought it would be a good idea to attend and check out the scene.

The theme of the summit was "Media as a tool for global peace and democracy". The word 'quality' was later suggested as an adjective to this theme by Roy Disney and I could not agree more. After having participated in the summit, to me there is one really important issue that arose and that is that it is critically important that children's voices are heard, even if it is just for the simple reason that children's voices are pure, uninfluenced and most often very straight-forwards and therefore of very high quality. They should certainly not be disregarded and must not be underestimated as a tool for global peace and democracy.

Obviously, it is important that policymakers and such listen to the stories of children, but maybe it is even more important that children are being given the opportunity to listen to each others stories to create a better understanding about each others cultures, lifestyles and beliefs, to hopefully shape their minds without prejudices, as their minds are still to be shaped.

It was fascinating to realise how immense the impact of media is on children throughout the world. A definite trend in the right direction that I seemed to notice was the growing involvement of children with the actual creation process of media. Another positive and noteworthy development was that children are still increasingly being taken seriously by global media, not just by advertisers, but also by content producers and even policymakers.

As for Marang House, I think that there still is a big need for education in South Africa about diseases and things such as organ donation and healthy lifestyles and that together with the media Marang House can play a very important role with providing this education by simply allowing our children to communicate their stories effectively to their peers.

I have met a lot of interesting people during this summit and have been once again inspired by the potential that lies within media. I will leave you with a short animation that Roy Disney showed as part of his speech and with some quotes from this speech that I think summarise why children's media can help change the world.

Today, the second Thursday in March, is World Kidney Day! All over the world activities are organized to raise awareness for chronic kidney diseases. Time for you to seriously consider becoming an organ donor. You may very well be able to give somebody 'the gift of life' in the future.

The Organ Donor Foundation can answer all the questions you may still have about this sensitive subject and can also provide you with all the material to become an organ donor.

Some Facts

• 10% of the adult population has some form of kidney damage.


• Every day our kidneys filter an average of 200 litres of blood.


• Chronic kidney diseases and cardiovascular diseases will kill 36 million people by the year 2015.


• Transplantation is now a highly successful procedure, which is considered routine surgical practice for people with serious kidney, liver, heart or lung disease.


• One year after transplantation of a kidney from a brain-dead donor around 90% of transplants are still functioning well. After five years over 60% are still healthy and overcoming any need for dialysis. Some kidney transplant patients have survived more than 25 years.


• Because people have two kidneys but need only one, a living relative often serves as a donor, retaining one kidney for his or her own use.


• In 2005 there were 1,084 organ transplants in South Africa, of which 232 were kidney transplants. Of those kidney transplants, 31% of kidney donors were related to the recipient.


• In South Africa there are about 40.000 people who suffer from chronic renal failure and are waiting for a new kidney.
  

More information on www.worldkidneyday.org and www.odf.org.za

Today a television crew of Kids' News, a daily news programme for children, followed both Elijah and Lorraine to show other South African children what it is like to suffer from chronic renal failure. The crew went with them to the hospital school and Elijah gave an interview while he was on the dialysis machine. Lorraine, who received a kidney transplant last December, shared her story and told them how this event has changed her life.

The interviews will be broadcasted on Friday 9 March 2007, 16:00 on SABC 2 as part of the activities around World Kidney Day.

Ronald McDonald visited the children at Marang House last week and treated them to a very entertaining magic show.

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