Tour Team

Each team travels to several different schools in England and Wales to deliver the 90 minute workshop to a large audience of roughly 300 students. We find that the Tour is a very successful and engaging way to teach students about HIV and AIDS, and to provide them with a positive way to help!

Tour Team 2006
JP Omari - Our own mini celebrity! JP was a 4th runner up in the BBC Strictly Dance Fever competition 2006! He is a street and hip hop dancer from Brighton and works with Red Zebra. JP has had no formal training and his dancing is all self taught – which makes him even more incredible in his role with Dance4Life. He sees dance as an important and positive influence in young people’s lives. JP also trained and toured with Dance4Life Ireland in 2006.

Tommy Prowse – Tommy is from Essex. He joined Dance4Life as a speaker on the tour for 2 weeks. The tour was a real challenge for him as everyday he spoke up with confidence about his HIV status and how it has affected his life, relationships and work. Tommy spoke of the tour as an opportunity to talk to other young people and give them the information he was denied – or ignored because it was un-cool - when he was at school.

Ian Sperring – Ian is from Brighton and toured with Dance4Life for the middle week of the tour. Ian is a member of the Terrance Higgins Trust Speakers Bureau and has been HIV positive for 16 years. Even though he is used to speaking, he still sees the importance of talking openly about HIV with young people and sees Dance4Life as a really innovative way of communicating with young people.

Dingase Mvula - Dingase is a trained peer educator and counsellor actively engaged in peer education initiatives to raise awareness about HIV through school, as a volunteer with the YMCA, as a qualified teacher and volunteering full time on SPW Zambia’s 11 month programme.

Richard Wanzala - Richard became personally involved with the fight to stop AIDS when his uncle died from an AIDS related illness in 1994. A graduate from Makerere University he went on to volunteer as a peer educator for SPW Uganda. He is currently working in support of SPW Uganda’s programme and is studying part time, researching gender issues through the Centre for Basic Research.

"My flight back home to Uganda was with the goal of underlining the role of young people as active rather than passive participants in the development process. My belief is that every young person in this world has a great role to play in the development process regardless of their sex, race and social status. What is left is for every young person to realize that they have got this potential and to be valued by the policy makers.
By Richard Wanzala, Tour Team 2006

Ollie Macdonald – Ollie works for Red Zebra and has been part of Dance4Life since the beginning in 2003. He was part of the international event in 2004 (you can see him on the moodclip) and has been to several of the countries where Dance4Life is happening. He is fully committed to the cause of Dance4Life and believes that Dance4Life is an incredible and powerful unifying experience for young people to be part of.

Tom Carr – Tom works closely with Red Zebra and Dance4Life. Tom has worked with Dance4Life in Egypt, Ireland as well as being on tour in the UK.

Simon Porter - Simon has worked closely with Red Zebra in the last few years and when he was a teenager - it is partly what inspired him to work with young people as he does today.  About Dance4Life he said:

"Being a member of the dance4life tour team was an exciting and inspiring experience. It opened my eyes about a lot of things surrounding the HIV pandemic, both here in the UK and on a worldwide scale. Most of all, my involvement with D4L confirmed my faith in the unifying power of music and dance, and reinforced my belief that young people can be a genuine force for change within the world today."

Caroline Kippen - Caroline is SPW’s Global Education Coordinator and coordinates Dance4Life in the UK.  She has been involved in Dance4Life in the UK since its conception.  Caroline previously volunteered with SPW in Zambia on their HIV and AIDS Education programme.