If the British actor, Nick Reding, were to be honest with himself, he never had a chance of becoming the next Bond. Roles in the film Croupier, The Constant Gardener and the tv series, Silent Witness and The Bill, had brought him both success and recognition but, truth be told, he just didn’t have the right look or shape for Bond. His heart wouldn’t have been in it anyway. ‘After all those years of acting, I didn’t have much sense of fulfilment’, he once said.
A different take on life was needed, and in 2001 he flew to Kenya to work as a volunteer for a Kenyan Indian doctor from New York, a specialist in paediatric HIV AIDS whose ambitious goal was to start a clinic in Kenya’s southeastern coastal city of Mombasa. What Nick discovered in Kenya was a public health communication failure on a massive scale. ‘I was shocked to find that 20 years into the epidemic the people of Kenya were still shockingly illiterate about AIDS. That is when I decided to make use of my profession to do something about it.’
When the HIV unit was up and running, Nick made the extraordinary life-changing decision to remain in Mombasa. He couldn’t leave. There was just too much to do. First job: find some good young actors hungry for work. Second: create the drama that would ‘get people on side by entertaining them and making them laugh while delivering the critical information they required.’
His focus would not just be HIV, but also female genital mutilation (FGM), rape, malnutrition and peace. Making this commitment, Nick created, built gradually, and now has successfully sustained S.A.F.E, the art for social change charity that uses ‘theatre, film and education to inform, inspire and deliver social, health, and environmental change.’ Developing characters based on real life and collecting stories from the local community, S.A.F.E. devises and delivers sobering street theatre in which people can see their own lives acted out.
One key to its success over two decades and more is the fact that S.A.F.E. relies upon performers drawn from the communities it is serving. The faces are familiar and trusted by audiences, ones they know have been through experiences similar to their own. Another key to its effectiveness is the follow-up after performances by the education teams, again local people who understand sensitivities and cultural concerns. They ensure that the messages of the performances have hit home and people know what action to take in order to protect and save life.
S.A.F.E.’s impact was probably best summed up by one of its former patrons, the late Alan Rickman. ‘In 2004 I visited one of S.A.F.E.’s tours. At the beginning of any given show, up to 2,000 people know little or nothing about AIDS except what mystery, rumour and prejudice tells them. An hour later, they go back to their villages knowing everything through stories they can identify with, and thousands of lives will be saved.’
According to the United Nations, as of 2022, a total of 39 million people worldwide were living with HIV, more than half of whom were women and girls. Last year, approximately 630,000 people around the world died from AIDS-related illnesses, but AIDS-related deaths have been reduced by 69 per cent since the peak in 2004.
S.A.F.E. still has lives to save in Kenya, audiences to inform, educate and entertain. Perhaps no greater tribute to Nick Reding, actor, director and philanthropist, has been paid than by the man who did become James Bond, and who gladly accepted the invitation to become a S.A.F.E. patron. Daniel Craig simply calls Nick Reding ‘a hero of mine.’