Two former Cayman residents have teamed up with two of the main figures behind The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock and Sesame Street. Together, they are using puppets to teach life saving messages to children around the world.
When Johnie McGlade was given an old puppet rabbit by a friend in Cayman in the late 80s, he had no idea where the seemingly innocuous gift would one day lead him.
Former Caymanian resident Johnie McGlade in Afghanistan, where the charity he founded, No Strings, is using puppet-based movies to educate children about the dangers of landmines. Picture: Submitted |
At the time a chef at L’Escargot, and later at the Cayman Arms, Mr. McGlade stashed it away, unsure of what to do with it.
Those in Cayman that don’t remember his cooking may have attended one of the charity bashes that Mr. McGlade helped organise.
With Irish compatriot Sean Dunne, he established a Cayman branch of international humanitarian organisation Goal in 1988.
During their time in Cayman they hosted plenty of fundraising events, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars for overseas aid projects in the process.
Then, in 1993, Mr. McGlade decided to help Goal at the frontline of one of its operations, in war ravaged Southern Sudan.
Unsure whether there would be much to keep the workers entertained during the evening, he dug out the puppet, Seamus, and set off for a three month assignment that, 15 years later, is still unfolding.
With no TVs or other mod-cons for entertainment at night, Mr. McGlade began using the puppet to entertain children around the camp fire.
Puppets, he quickly noticed, held a kind of magic. They were funny, unthreatening, and children – and adults too, for that matter – hung on their every word.
Mr. McGlade began using the puppet to help organise food lines at refugee camps. While the refugees wouldn’t listen to his instructions, they followed the orders of the puppet. Seamus, he noticed, was transcending cultural boundaries in ways he could not.
Over the next four years, as Mr. McGlade traveled from one humanitarian disaster to the next, he began to ponder how he could use puppets to do more than just entertain in damage and war ravaged areas.
Over time, he came to recognise that they were an ideal medium through which to present vital safety messages to people whose lives had been torn apart by conflict or disaster, or who were unable to read written instructions.
Just fraggled
In 1996 Mr. McGlade returned to Cayman for six months, before heading to London to establish an office for Goal in the UK.
There, a chance connection brought him into contact with Kathy Mullen and Michael Frith, a husband and wife team who had been amongst the original players in The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock and Sesame Street.
Ms Mullen had been the principal performer with the Muppet Show and had also written and directed many scripts.
Mr. Frith played a pivotal role in creating the show, five Muppet movies, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock and many other productions. A former executive vice president of Jim Henson Productions, Mr. Frith also drew and designed many of the puppets for the shows.
‘For many years they had been trying to use their skills in the developing world. It was incredible,’ Mr. McGlade says.
‘With their creative side, and my background in humanitarian relief, we stumbled onto the idea of No Strings.’
Together, they conceived a charity organisation that would use films made by two of the world’s leading puppeteers to teach life saving messages to children in developing countries, using characters that were easily identifiable within individual cultures.
‘It was the year after 9/11 and we thought Afghanistan was an appropriate place to go, to teach about landmine awareness.’
Together they researched, wrote and produced a puppet-based film called ChuchieQhalin, The Story of the Little Carpet Boy.
They dubbed it into the two main Afghan languages, Pashto and Dari, and toured it around school and community groups using off road motorbikes, to which they attached self sufficient sidecar units containing a huge screen, projector and generator.
Through a wonderful adventure and much loved characters, the film aimed to help children understand the everyday dangers that the country’s millions of landmines and unexploded ordinances posed, and how they could keep safe.
They were also a disarming way to communicate with people in a disaster and war ravaged place, where tensions and suspicions ran high.
‘Puppets can get away with a lot,’ Mr. McGlade explains. ‘In the landmine film, one of the characters loses both his legs, but the children love it for entertainment’s sake.
‘What is extraordinary though, is that the children retain almost 100 per cent of the information they see in the film.’
Cayman arm
Encouraged with the success of the Afghan landmine movie, No Strings decided to broaden their message. They have developed culturally-sensitive puppet-based films based on natural disaster preparedness and peace advocacy. Their next educational programmes will include drug awareness issues and health education.
In 2004, Mr. McGlade and No Strings patron Neil Morrissey, the actor, returned to Cayman to establish a Cayman arm of No Strings, hoping to enlist the support of their friends and contact here.
‘We always wanted to come back to Cayman to link Cayman to what we were doing and set up a Cayman office,’ Mr. McGlade says.
‘We came back just before Ivan and were just on the verge of getting registered as a charity here, and then Ivan hit.’
Almost three years later, they are again back in Cayman hoping to register No Strings as a charity here. They have already attracted influential local backing and plan to appoint a Cayman-based board of directors if their registration application is approved.
Mr. McGlade says local backers Michael Thomas, Jenny Alban, Danielle Coleman and Keith Griffin, who will probably constitute part of the Cayman board, are committed to ensuring the organisation has a long term presence here.
This will complement the charity’s existing connection to Cayman; No String’s Boards of directors in the UK, Ireland and the USA all include Caymanians or former Caymanian residents.
They also see No Strings Cayman as a vehicle to unite Cayman friends old and new, far and wide, through a No Strings database of contacts.
‘There has always been that Cayman link and now we want to set up No Strings Cayman, Mr. McGlade says.
‘We want to tap into the corporate world here to help our international projects but also, when we fundraise here, we want to donate back into a local charity here to give back to the community.’
A base in Cayman would also be an ideal place to project their activities into the Caribbean, Mr. McGlade says.
‘Down the line, what we really want to do is show a film on HIV/AIDS awareness using generic characters. It’s not just an issue that is touching the Caribbean, it’s global.’
Disaster training
In their latest project in Indonesia, No Strings are using their unique films to educate about natural disasters – a topic Caymanians will keenly recognise the importance of.
‘We’re covering tsunamis, hurricanes, volcanoes and earthquakes. The films will also educate young Indonesians about what to do before, during and after an emergency.’
On a budget of US$250,000, No Strings thinks its disaster education presentation can reach up to a million people in Indonesia alone.
Though they are intended for children, No Strings has noticed that the children are regularly passing on what they have learned to their parents, Mr. McGlade says.
‘It’s difficult to fathom the regularity with which natural disasters hit Indonesia, it’s just staggering.
‘This is a really effective way to communicate critical information to people in regions that don’t have anywhere near the sort of emergency response capabilities that exist in Cayman.
‘We can display the movies to up to 300 children at a time. When they ask questions afterward, we actually have the puppets respond; it holds the children’s attention much better – they just love it.’
Clearly, No String’s has come up with a novel way to deliver critically important educational messages. Though still a small organisation, No Strings is attracting lots of interest from major international aid organisations.
‘It’s getting such a great response from other major international charity organisations because it’s actually complementing what they do,’ says Sean Dunne.
‘From the start, Johnie saw that kids could relate to a hand puppet better than an adult with a foreign tongue,’ he says.
‘The more people we speak to, they just think it is such a simple idea and yet it just works perfectly; kids just react so well to it.’
FYI
For more information on No Strings in Cayman call Danielle Coleman on 926 6764 or visit: www.nostrings.org.uk or www.nostrings.ie
Related Videos
