HELP us continue Public Education on LIGHTNING SAFETY!
Does it say Knowledge? Ideas? Shining light on an issue that needs to be addressed? When entire families are wiped out by lightning, we think that needs to have a LIGHT shone on it!
In late 2020, we put together the public service announcement (PSA) on lightning safety pictured above and broadcast it during the Christmas holiday season when families were home to see it, get curious, and learn about lightning safety.
When Michiel Hartmann, a lightning safety and protection advocate from the Netherlands, contacted us about projects he could ask his Rotary Club to support, we suggested starting with a small donation that could have a BIG impact: translating this PSA into Luganda, the most common traditional language in Uganda. Although English is the official language of Uganda, many people in the rural areas, where most of the injuries and deaths occur, use their ancestral languages and may not speak or read English well. In the process, we also learned that, unlike westerners who would expect the PSA dubbed with no distractions, Ugandans want to see and hear who was speaking before a phrase is spoken over with a translation and also want to see the subtitles - Take a look at the PSA in Luganda! (THANKS TO THE ROTARY CLUB!!)
Additionally, we learned that there are four common ways Ugandans access media: internet, TV, radio, and print newspapers. In rural areas, there may be no electricity for TV's, no Wifi for internet, and little penetration of newspapers, but radios are always playing at work, in homes, and in stores so we also want to modify this PSA and write others for radio.
Can you help us? Your DONATION will help us to spread information about PREVENTING LIGHTNING INJURIES - THANK YOU!
The donation tiers include other ways to educate, work with teachers in schools, use billboards (very effective in HIV prevention campaigns), and other public education methods that have been found to be effective in Uganda. --- Then we want to translate it to other languages and spread it to other countries in their preferred languages!