Artists for A New South Africa

Founded in 1989 by noted members of the arts and entertainment community to support south africa's quest for freedom and democracy, artists for a new south africa (ansa) has since raised over $9 million for effective african nonprofits, shipped more than 70 tons of medical supplies and books to impoverished communities and reached millions of people across the u.s. and africa, with essential information about hiv/aids and voting rights. Since 2005, ansa has provided annual ongoing comprehensive care and services to over 3,500 aids orphans and vulnerable children in south africa. In keeping with ansa board's decision in 2012 to begin winding down the organization's operations, ansa closed down our external offices in july 2013, donating office furniture and supplies to local charities and worked on the turnover of intellectual property rights. Much of the programmatic work focused on preserving the legacy of the anti-apartheid movement and its leaders for future generations as well as on organizing the organization's archives and the documentation of ansa's history. Ansa's public education and media program focuses on developing, advising, and/or promoting media, books, psa campaigns, films, tv, theater and events that educate audiences about africa, hiv/aids, human and civil rights and related issues. 2013 work included extensive efforts in response to the hospitalization, pending death, and funeral of nelson mandela. Ansa worked on the bet special, "mandela: freedom's father" which aired on the icon's 95th birthday, providing historic photos and footage and arranging interviews with key ansa representatives and supporters, including alfre woodard, blair underwood, cch pounder, deborah santana, jurnee smollett, harry belafonte, ansa's executive director sharon gelman and mandela biographer, richard stengel. In addition to advising the embassy on its advance planning for media and memorials, ansa issued its own organizational press release upon mr. mandela's passing and responded to extensive media requests, arranging interviews with multiple outlets including cnn, npr, bet, al jazeera, kpfa, the south african broadcasting corporation, feature story, jn1 and more. Sharon gelman penned tributes to mandela that were featured on care2.com and the south african online magazine hot.ansa also arranged an interview with desmond tutu and narration by alfre woodard (who went on to serve as executive producer) for the award-winning documentary "soft vengeance: albie sachs and the new south africa". Ansa helped promote the film as well as the feature film "long walk to freedom" about the life of nelson mandela.ansa worked with the los angeles public library, arranging for justice albie sach to participate in "aloud", their public reading serie, and arranged for him to be interviewed on stage by npr host renee montagne. Ansa also helped to promote the new south african arts fest in los angeles.ansa provided ongoing social media content on facebook and twitter that that reached over 2,000 people per week with news and information about south africa, hiv/aids and social justice issues and events. Ansa also worked with the ahmed kathrada foundation on the conceptualization on a new back about mr. kathrada and robben island.ansa continued effort to promote nelson mandela's favorite african folktales, ansa's award-winning star-studded audiobook that raises money for aids orphans in south africa, while introducing listeners worldwide to african culture. Ansa worked with the publisher hachette audio to ensure that all proceeds raised from the audiobook would go straight to ansa's grantees, the nelson mandela children's fund and the aids foundation of south africa, starting in september 2014.