Akhona
Makasi, 21, is from Port Elizabeth. She is doing her final year in Journalism studies at the Cape Peninsula University
of Technology. She believes that mainstream media has a
specific agenda which often doesn’t involve the stories of our people.
We often hear about HIV/AIDS but we seldom have correct information about
it. We need to convey a clear and factual message to the public, especially with the high incidence of violence against women and children.
Cynthia Maseko, a mother of two, comes from Msogwaba township in Mpumalanga. After matric, she joined TAC as a
volunteer with the aim of educating young people about HIV and influencing
positive behaviour change, with a special focus on young girls. She wrote for their monthly newsletter, Equal Treatment. Now she writes for Health-e News, giving a voice to the voiceless in rural communities.
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After graduating with a BA Honours in Media Theory and Practice from UCT in 2015, Ashleigh Furlong began working at GroundUp, a social justice news website. She specialises in health, gender, sex work, court and urban land justice stories. She has written about mental health issues, drug stockouts, clinical trials and matters surrounding HIV. Of particular interest is how sex workers and LGBTQI individuals are disproportionately affected by HIV.
In 2013, Thabo Molelekwa became a Treatment
Action Campaign member through his local branch in Vosloorus east of
Johannesburg before joining Health-e News as a citizen journalist. The following year,
Thabo was named an International HIV Prevention Reporting Fellow with the
International Centre for Journalists, a finalist in the Discovery Health
Journalism Awards competition and a Vodacom regional journalist of the year 2016.
Bulelwa Maphanga is a community journalist
and a freelance journalist for Daily Sun. She was born and raised in KaBokweni,
in Mpumalanga. She knows people who are living with HIV/AIDS, of which some are her
relatives and close friends. She has watched many die because of lack of
information. She feels her role as a journalist is to supply such information.
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