PEPFAR

I’ve been working pretty hard on a lengthy plan of action and project proposal with the obstetric nurse, Mabel, in my site. We are working on a plan for PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief). We had a workshop based on HIV/AIDS relief a few months ago in Chulucanas and we have finally finished our project proposal! I’m waiting to hear word from Peace Corps about any corrections or changes I need to make (if I’m lucky and we wrote a great proposal, there won’t be any). If all goes as planned, we would receive the funds and start an intense HIV/AIDS and STD campaign in my site in September (which is when the meetings are scheduled to start).

First, we are going to have a meeting of all of the teachers in the Primary and Secondary Schools (I think there are 12 total). We are going to explain the project and ask permission to borrow some of their session time in hopefully in one of their unstructured classes (tutoria, which is kind of like study hall but the teachers can use the class to teach something they want). We are going to capacitate the teachers in a brief workshop, as well.

Then, we recruit youth health promoters. We are hoping to recruit 10-12 kids in third and fourth grade at the secondary school to participate in a 12 session workshop. The workshop will train the kids in all they need to know about HIV/AIDS and STDs as well as develop their skills for giving presentations and their public speaking skills. It will also train them to develop a class and basic workshops. Our goal with the youth health promoters is to have them share the information they learned with everyone around my site. What this means is all of the youth in the secondary school, all of the families, leaders of the community, administrators and anyone not covered by that within Pambarumbe but also in all of the neighboring towns, too.

We are also going to perform a skit (which we haven’t written or done anything with yet!), have a propaganda campaign (we are going to create flyers to pass around to everyone in my site as well as make large signs and place them throughout the town), and hopefully have a radio show or two!

This has been a lengthy process planning this all out and writing up our budget proposal but I think it’ll be a great project. The kids will learn a lot and learn how to protect themselves!



Kids working on an AIDS assignment


More of the kids working on a project


The obstetric nurse giving a condom presentation