December the First is World AIDS Day and Xifeng is being painted red. Not by communists or drunken revellers, but by HIV ribbons and awareness posters.
From 2005 the Chinese Ministry of Education will require that all college and secondary school students receive basic sex and HIV and AIDS education. To compliment this, part of Voluntary Services Overseas’ strategy for China is to combat HIV and AIDS though integrating it into our lessons and though peer education. Our aim is to equip students with some skills to teach this topic for when they go on to become middle and primary school teachers, and remove some of the taboo and fear surrounding it. This is crucial when you consider that there is an estimated
forty million people with HIV and AIDS world wide (China alone potentially having ten million by 2010), and nine out of ten unaware that they have it. Fifteen thousand people a day are added to this tally – almost twice the population of Wick.
Spearheading VSO’s peer education initiative is the ‘Dandelion Project’. I am fortunate enough to be involved in this and attended a conference last May in Beijing to learn about it. Two of my students, Wu Ling and Lei Teng Fei also attended. The ‘Dandelion Project’ is so-called because the image of the dandelion represents the students involved in the peer education. The essential premise is that students are trained how to raise awareness about HIV and AIDS and will then spread the ‘seed’ of knowledge among their peers. By using Chinese students, the project is made more sustainable, less pedagogical (therefore less daunting), and as the lessons are in Chinese, facilitates a greater understanding of the issues around HIV.
Knowing how to protect oneself from HIV is one thing, but one of the greatest challenges to a person living with HIV or AIDS is the way that other people treat them. A key focus of the ‘Dandelion Project’ is to de-stigmatise those with HIV and AIDS. Prime Minister Wen Jia Bao recently highlighted this when he visited an HIV and AIDS clinic in China and shook hands with a patient. Additionally the Chinese Government is considering the idea of allowing HIV carriers (although not AIDS patients) to be appointed to civil service positions.
When we returned to Xifeng after the journey to Beijing, Wu Ling, Lei Teng Fei and myself trained an additional eight students (four boys and four girls) to assist us in our project. Zhang Hui, one of the ten peer educators said, “I wanted to take part in this project to help people who have HIV and AIDS. I feel it is important in my life to inform my friends and family about how to protect themselves.”
Each weekend we involve two classes, which we divide in to groups of two (altogether four groups). Each group is taught by a male and a female peer educator to encourage co-operation of the genders and show that men and women can work together to prevent HIV. So far the project has met with great success. The peer educators are doing a fantastic job and I am very proud of them. We hope to extend it to other departments in the College next term, as well as possibly to middle schools.
Education is the ultimate way of preventing the spread of HIV. Though methods of transmission, for example unprotected sex, is a taboo subject, it is essential to discuss them. Many international organizations and governments refuse to promote knowledge about contraception, but the fact is that many people, particularly women in the less developed world, have little choice about their sexual activities. Indeed gender inequality is at the heart of the HIV epidemic in developing countries. Women need to be empowered to assert their rights and negotiate relationships, and men need to be aware that this is acceptable.
If people know how to protect themselves, HIV can be stopped. Young people are the future. Working with them to give them the skills and knowledge for a healthy and happy life is imperative in the battle against the HIV pandemic. The UN Global Fund to fight AIDS hoped to raise ten billion US Dollars a year to do this, yet since June 2001 only three point two billion in total has been pledged by world governments. Apathy and denial are as big a threat as HIV itself.
From 2005 the Chinese Ministry of Education will require that all college and secondary school students receive basic sex and HIV and AIDS education. To compliment this, part of Voluntary Services Overseas’ strategy for China is to combat HIV and AIDS though integrating it into our lessons and though peer education. Our aim is to equip students with some skills to teach this topic for when they go on to become middle and primary school teachers, and remove some of the taboo and fear surrounding it. This is crucial when you consider that there is an estimated
forty million people with HIV and AIDS world wide (China alone potentially having ten million by 2010), and nine out of ten unaware that they have it. Fifteen thousand people a day are added to this tally – almost twice the population of Wick.Spearheading VSO’s peer education initiative is the ‘Dandelion Project’. I am fortunate enough to be involved in this and attended a conference last May in Beijing to learn about it. Two of my students, Wu Ling and Lei Teng Fei also attended. The ‘Dandelion Project’ is so-called because the image of the dandelion represents the students involved in the peer education. The essential premise is that students are trained how to raise awareness about HIV and AIDS and will then spread the ‘seed’ of knowledge among their peers. By using Chinese students, the project is made more sustainable, less pedagogical (therefore less daunting), and as the lessons are in Chinese, facilitates a greater understanding of the issues around HIV.
Knowing how to protect oneself from HIV is one thing, but one of the greatest challenges to a person living with HIV or AIDS is the way that other people treat them. A key focus of the ‘Dandelion Project’ is to de-stigmatise those with HIV and AIDS. Prime Minister Wen Jia Bao recently highlighted this when he visited an HIV and AIDS clinic in China and shook hands with a patient. Additionally the Chinese Government is considering the idea of allowing HIV carriers (although not AIDS patients) to be appointed to civil service positions.
When we returned to Xifeng after the journey to Beijing, Wu Ling, Lei Teng Fei and myself trained an additional eight students (four boys and four girls) to assist us in our project. Zhang Hui, one of the ten peer educators said, “I wanted to take part in this project to help people who have HIV and AIDS. I feel it is important in my life to inform my friends and family about how to protect themselves.”
Each weekend we involve two classes, which we divide in to groups of two (altogether four groups). Each group is taught by a male and a female peer educator to encourage co-operation of the genders and show that men and women can work together to prevent HIV. So far the project has met with great success. The peer educators are doing a fantastic job and I am very proud of them. We hope to extend it to other departments in the College next term, as well as possibly to middle schools.
Education is the ultimate way of preventing the spread of HIV. Though methods of transmission, for example unprotected sex, is a taboo subject, it is essential to discuss them. Many international organizations and governments refuse to promote knowledge about contraception, but the fact is that many people, particularly women in the less developed world, have little choice about their sexual activities. Indeed gender inequality is at the heart of the HIV epidemic in developing countries. Women need to be empowered to assert their rights and negotiate relationships, and men need to be aware that this is acceptable.
If people know how to protect themselves, HIV can be stopped. Young people are the future. Working with them to give them the skills and knowledge for a healthy and happy life is imperative in the battle against the HIV pandemic. The UN Global Fund to fight AIDS hoped to raise ten billion US Dollars a year to do this, yet since June 2001 only three point two billion in total has been pledged by world governments. Apathy and denial are as big a threat as HIV itself.
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