DNA Awareness Campaign moves into the Eastern Cape – March 2012

I have just returned from a two day trip to Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape where, in collaboration with Business Against Crime (Eastern Cape), The DNA Project launched its DNA and Crime Scene Awareness campaign into that region. Thanks to BAC (E.C.), Protea Marine Hotel and Berco Express (PE) for their collective contributions and assistance which ensured that this event took place, that all training material was at hand and that we had a wonderful venue to host the DNA Awareness workshops and myself in P.E.

Vanessa Lynch showing Bryan Howard (MD of BAC, EC) an innovative way to teach trainees about DNA

The uptake and enthusiasm of the E.C. community to promote crime scene awareness in their area was phenomenal. This is a pro-active community where even 18 year old girls are willing to patrol their communities to keep criminals off the streets and out of their houses.

The first day was dedicated to training 17 Trainers which included our new DNA Project trainer in the E.C., Mr Lee Ah Kun. A combination of first on crime responders ranging from paramedics and security officers, to traffic officers to SAPS to CPF leaders made up the first group of trainees, all of whom will now inlcude DNA Awareness into their own training protocols. We all learnt a huge amount from each other and the interaction and participation amongst this group was absolutely fantastic.

The next day was dedicated to providing standard DNA Awareness workshops to local CPF’s and I threw our new recruit, Lee into the deep end, making him conduct his first workshop on his own in the second part of the day. Suffice to say, Lee did a great job and is ready to take on the E.C. region to disseminate this vitally important information amongst first on crime scene responders. Lee joins recently appointed Rhys Mccoll (KZN) as one of our two new recent recruits.

Lee Ah Kun conducting his first workshop in P.E.

Should you wish to participate in these DNA Awareness workshops please contact Maya Moodley on maya@dnaproject.co.za and she will send you further information.

Our DNA Awareness workshops are going from strength to strength and just today we received extremely positive feedback from the KZN based, Chatsworth SAPS station, which is testimony to the amazing work our trainers are doing in creating critical crime scene awareness and preservation amongst first on crime scene responders. It is this type of response that makes our work so worthwhile….

1. The Chatsworth Cluster Commander, Brig. K. Nunkumar and the Station Commander,SAPS Chatsworth, Brig. C. F. Marais, would like to take this opportunity to extend their heartfelt gratitude to your organisaton for the workshops organized by Maya Moodley & presented by Dr Carolyn Hancock at SAPS Chatsworth on 7 & 8 March 2012.

2. The workshops were very well presented, interesting and informative.

3. Thank you also for the free booklets, dvds and posters.

4. Further workshops will definitely be requested in the near future, in view of the positive feedback from commanders and members that attended.

5. Once again thank you and God bless for the wonderful and insightful workshops.

BRIGADIER K NUNKUMAR
CLUSTER COMMANDER: CHATSWORTH

Chatsworth SAPS member with one of their 5 new DNA Awareness posters given to them by The DNA Project

Have a good weekend and remember, DNA CSI!

Vanessa Lynch

This entry was posted on Fri, Mar 16th, 2012 at 4:01 pm and is filed under DNA Project. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.