Communicating through the Media
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Communicating through the Media |
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A decade ago Wilhelmina Fredericks of NDG set out to practice self- empowerment by creating jobs for herself and other women with a similar interest in the creative arts. She founded Zerf Productions, a non-profit charitable organization, to promote ethnic and gender tolerance, sponsor unrecognized artists, feed and clothe NDG’s needy, and provide a communications institute for teaching media skills in her native South Africa.. 
Ten years of struggle without salary and little government funding are
beginning to yield results. Caring individuals of the NDG community together
with CBC Radio, Nesbitt Burns and other businesses have donated their help.
Zerf Productions has shipped computers, electronic equipment, clothing
and books (like those in our picture) to the New Hope Centre for the Hearing
Impaired in Worcester and to a Korean Presbyterian mission in Khayalitsha
Township near Cape Town, South Africa. Christensen Canadian African Lines
(CCAL), a committed corporate friend of Zerf, transports the shipments
free of charge.
Through Fredericks' persistence and that of its Board of Directors, Zerf Productions has built diversified local support. Zerf’s annual Khoi-Khoi, Freedom Day, Kinderfest, and Stille Nag celebrations contribute significantly to the NDG community by showcasing unrecognized artists and allocating part of the proceeds to church funds and food banks. Zerf’s bi-annual newsletter, Zerf News, has spread the word. At the South African Women for Women awards ceremony in Toronto last summer, Fredericks received an achievement award for her lifetime role in film and communications. The ceremony honoured those South Africans who have contributed to the empowerment of women. Fredericks maintains that this applies especially to women of colour victimized in the past not only by the oppressive policy of apartheid but by a society where women are still treated as second class citizens. “Apartheid,” she says, “may no longer be on the books but it still exists in practice. It will be a while before women will be considered free in every aspect.” Zerf Productions, she hopes, will help inspire and shape the dreams of women and children by offering them media skills “to tell their stories.” Zerf Productions (Canada) was founded in 1988. A South African sister organization, Zerf Productions (SA), operated by a board of directors, mostly women, was set up in Worcester in 1997. Donations to equip the Zerf Communications Institute are welcomed. Contributions in the form of 35mm cameras, photographic darkroom equipment, radio studio transmitter/receivers, tape recorders and word- processing computers are particularly useful. Zerf Productions can be reached by tel/fax at 486-6807 or by e-mail at mrembo27@hotmail.com. |