This is the first of two campaigns we are planning for Kickstarter. This initial campaign will help us to make an initial 20 minute film, build a radio tower and get the station started. We plan our first trip in June, 2013. A small seed grant from National Geographic has provided initial support for this project.

Don’t forget your donations are tax deductible via IssueTV 501c3. Kickstarter will provide you with a tax-deductible receipt.

If you would like more information give us a call or check out our website:

Issue Television 501c3
8202 Alcorn Circle
Austin, TX 78748
505-699-8948
www.issuetv.org
info@issuetv.org

Building a radio station in Cameroon and making a film about it is going to be a major challenge! The area is remote, we will have to charge our cameras on solar power, keep our equipment dry and clean and get all the shots right. There will be bribes to pay, cultural faux pas to work around and malaria to avoid.

Just getting to Nditam, Issa’s tiny village, will be days of travel over rivers that have no bridges, in one of the most corrupt places in the world. Wish us luck!

Since 2009, Hope International for Tikar People, founded by Cameroonian native and activist Issa Nyaphaga and the Bush Medicine Partnership, founded by students from Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia have been working together to improve the quality of life in the Tikar villages in Eastern Cameroon as well as other marginalized communities with no access to medical care. Thus far, the partnership has served the urgent health needs of over 8,000 people in the isolated tribal communities of Cameroon.

Art for Health, is a venue for transforming uninhibited artistic expression into tangible medical and public health aid for marginalized communities. Each year, the Bush Medicine Partnership sends medical volunteers and essential supplies to Cameroon to carry-out health campaigns in remote, under-served communities that lack even the most basic health care, villages which include N’ditam, where Issa was raised.  With cleaner drinking water, less chronic intestinal and malarial disease and crippling injuries, our hope is that these communities will become closer to being freed from the burdens of poverty, and be more able to focus on education, art, music and expression of their unique cultural lineage.

Art for Health will take place on March 31 at Project Reach NYC and is co-sponsored by freeDimensional. All are welcome to attend this lively event! The goal is to raise $10,000 which be used to purchase essential medical and surgical supplies for a five week medical campaign in Cameroon this Summer.

Project Reach NYC. 39 Eldridge St. 4FL. New York, NY. 10002

freeDimensional is now five years old.  Whereas we have a particular way that we actualize art and social justice by hosting activists and culture workers-in-distress in the surplus (vacant) apartments of artist residencies, we often see amazing projects that inspire us, innovate and show new approaches to advocating freedom of thought and expression.  The Impossible Music Sessions is just such an initiative!  Here’s a clip about Session #3, a tribute to Lapiro de Mbanga, which happened on 16 November 2010 in Brooklyn, New York.  Lapiro is Ray Ban outlet currently in prison in Cameroon on trumped up charges because he challenged the president in one of his songs; if you are interested in helping Lapiro keep his spirits up, look here.  As you can see we have a new section where we feature projects we like such as The Impossible Music Sessions.  We’ll feature a new one each quarter.

But his artwork represents much darker story of rebirth. Nyaphaga was raised in a small village in the equatorial forests of Cameroon. After high school, he worked as a political cartoonist for the newspaper, Le Messager Popoli. In 1994, Cameroon’s regime jailed and tortured Nyaphaga for oppositional ideas expressed in his controversial cartoons. Two years later, Nyaphaga escaped Cameroon to seek asylum in France.

Since his escape, Nyaphaga has continued his passion throughout France and the United States with the support of organizations such as freeDemensional. Nyaphaga is currently working on the development of a philosophical installation called Urban Way, which combines body paint, music and performance in a symbolic protest against his exile. The artist also created Capillarism, a painting technique in which a layer of human http://www.gooakley.com/ hair lies on the canvas beneath the paint, adding a unique texture to his work.

In addition to his own art projects, he also has taught painting courses at universities, led workshops for at-risk children and illustrated books in France. In 2002, Nyaphaga founded Hope International for the Tikar People, an organization that provides school and health care supplies, such as wheelchairs and books, to seven Tikar villages in Cameroon. He also co-founded the organization African Journalists in Exile, which supports oppressed writers. Nyaphaga has been cheap oakley featured in two documentaries, one – called The Pen in Exile – about his life, with a third in progress.

By Hannah Oppenheimer

The World Policy Journal is featuring five freeDimensional stakeholders on its blog this Fall in relation to its current issue, The Creative Canon.

Photo via flickr courtesy of networkcultures.