In the first series of interventions with the rural craftswomen, the Durban City Environmental Health Department (under the guidance of Gayle O’Connor - Principal Environmental Health officer) thematically presented all the HIV/AIDS information to the beadwork producers in the workshops. Their insistence that HIV/AIDS awareness must not be separate from environmental aspects proved both valuable and important, for instance pollution and safe water were topics discussed at length as these two aspects have an immediate bearing on water-transmitted disease and thus impact negatively on health.
The National Association of People Living with AIDS (NAPWA), Kuyasa Devoted Artists and the Shembe virgins are acknowledged for their contributing performances of dance, song and narration which formed a vital component of building up knowledge of HIV/AIDS and has informed the project to the present day.
Agnes Xaba (practicing sangoma) and Edna Gumede are both acknowledged as having worked alongside the rural women on a regular basis.
The project has been blessed with much intellectual support from Prof. Jackie Guille of the University of Newcastle/Northumbria, United Kingdom, Prof. Ian Sutherland of the Department of Visual Communication Design at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) in Durban, South Africa and Prof. Joan Conolly of the Durban University of Technology (DUT) in Durban, South Africa.
Prof. Suzanne Leclerc-Madala, previously of the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, has advised in the arena of medical anthropology and ethnographic research.
Professors Marsha MacDowell and C. Kurt Dewhurst of Michigan State University museum have been pivotal in last decade in ensuring that the project is seen in museums all over the USA.