Yet another day at the conference has passed. Today a lot of interesting local experiences on Prevention for Youth and Stigma & Discrimination were shared. Below some of them were high lighted. After all the sessions a lot of people met in the Global Village to join the march for Human Rights. It was a spectacular march, with yells, brass bands, lots of vuvuzela's, touching speaches and a performance of Annie Lennox. We are re energised to join forces and actually make it happen.
The Journey of Hope. Creating a network of care for children
Nontobeko Sithole of the Catholic Institute of Education (CIE) took the audience on an interactive journey. She started the session by explaining the risk and protective factors in children’s lives. Then we listened to the story of Mpho, a 19 year old boy in South Africa who lost both of his parents due to AIDS. Along his life line Mpho was presented with various challenges, such as dropping out of school and losing one of his parents. Nontobeko asked the audience to discuss Mpho's situation and determine his position in the river. The river represented life with all its challenges (crocodiles a leaking boat, etc). By discussing where Mpho was in each stadium of his life, we saw how he moved on the scale of well-being. After this exercise Nontobeko demonstrated how to decrease vulnerability of children with help of a Network of Care. Participants received the booklet a Journey of Hope where they can read all about setting up a network of care and improve the well being of children within a community.
Lots to do with little money: The low cost implementation of a workplace policy
Wassie Azashe the project coordinator of the STOP AIDS NOW! Ethiopian workplace programme held an interactive discussion with the audience about low cost workplace responses. In contrary to what many people think there are ways of implementing a workplace policy with limited funding. Wassie set out a series of options which could be used to take away resitance among donors based the idea that implementing a workplace policy involves a lot of money.
Ethiopian organisations have shown that you can have a very comprehensive low cost workplace policy drawn together with staff in a participatory. In addition to that some organisations have even established an AIDS Fund with contrbutions from their own staff to fund their own HIV workplace response. In some cases these policies even include the care of orphans and children affected by HIV and AIDS.
After the session we used the soccer game to stimulate discussion among the audience. Participants had to answer questions about stigma & discrimination and HIV in the workplace. The game was hosted by Sue Holden who researched and wrote our new publication Managing HIV in the Workplace; A Guide for CSOs. Based on their answers during the quiz, the soccer players were afterwards informed about the tool and how they could benefit from that.
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