Poster Session: Want To Finance A Local HIV Initiative? Start Your Own Business

Teddy Exports is based in Tamil Nadu, India and was established in 1990 in a mud hut with five employees. It now has an annual turnover of around USD 3 million and a workforce of more than 300 people. Along the way it has picked up many awards as a successful small business. Seeing around her many local skills, but few commercial opportunities, Anne Murphy drew on her experience as a sales assistant in The Body Shop, and persuaded its owners to place an order for handcrafted wooden massage rollers. This was the start of Teddy Exports, which now manufactures a wide range of wooden and cotton bags, shirts, saris and lamp stands, with a screen printing unit to produce customised items - and sells these to outlets worldwide. In 1994 the Teddy Trust was established to use the profits from the business. The HIV/AIDS awareness work of the Trust began in 1995. It targeted long distance truck drivers and now has two truckers booths on South India's main highway, where free condoms are distributed and information and counselling provided. The work has now extended so that it now includes street theatre, puppet shows (for both children and adults) and reproductive and child health teams, who work with pregnant women and mothers in ten villages around Tirumangalam. These teams provide ante and post-natal care, treat reproductive tract infections and provide information about HIV/AIDS and prevention. Through the local elephant vet, Amanda has been able to make use of the Ôtemple elephants' to promote health education and HIV/AIDS prevention measures. The elephants act as walking billboards, covered by large blankets with printed messages on their sides. They also distribute free condoms as they move around the area. Because they are "temple elephants" they are viewed as having the blessing of the deity in their work. In recent years, Teddy Exports has also begun to produce "wooden willies" for use as health education tools. These replace the odd variety of items, which health educators employed in demonstrating proper condom use. The story of Teddy Exports and the Teddy Trust provides a great example of integrated local development. There are no donors in the usual sense, it is entirely self-supporting, and practises local decision-making based on locally determined needs, and is thoroughly incorporated into the local community. In so doing they have managed to encompass many of the issues which are identified as socio-economic determinants of the HIV epidemic - poverty, powerlessness, access to appropriate services, input to decision-making, and education.