HIV & AIDS Awareness

The second HIV/AIDS initiative was the completion of the Stepping Stones programme, which was designed specifically for people in sub-Saharan Africa, and is based on a participatory approach to learning. A newly trained group of facilitators will continue to work in the wider community to teach the local population about safer sex, relationships and life skills.

Over the last year Bottletop has provided funding which has enabled Temwa to run 4 x HIV and AIDS Educational Workshops (2 x Stepping Stones programs, 2 x BCI Programs), coordinate the formation of a group of people openly living with HIV and AIDS (NAPHAM Group - this group will encourage the population of Usisya to be tested for HIV and AIDS and to be open about their status) and organise a community centre open-day focused on HIV and AIDS. Their funding also covered a member of staff to coordinate these activities. Bottletop has recently provided funding for HIV and AIDS projects to continue throughout 2009. The programmes that this grant will fund include a Knowledge, Attitudes and Practise (KAP) survey, and Peer Education and Behavioural Change Intervention courses.

The majority of these activities have all taken place in very remote regions of Usisya, bringing knowledge to people who have not previously been exposed to such in-depth HIV and AIDS information. With these programs we have been reaching communities that have not had any previous contact with another NGO/charity.

Peer Education Training

This project aims to provide young people with the information that they need to avoid STIs and to encourage the uptake of voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) services in this age group. This will be done by training peer educators who can then go on to educate their contemporaries in their respective areas of Usisya. The training covers issues such as communication, relationships, assertiveness and gender stereotypes. Ultimately we would like reduce the incidence of STIs (including HIV/AIDS) among men and women between the ages of 15-24 in Usisya, Nkhata Bay District. This age group that accounts for 10 per cent of the country's population and is important as it is the age range in which people are becoming sexually active and forming their sexual habits.

Objectives include improving young people’s knowledge of sexual and reproductive health (SRH), increasing VCT attendance among females and males aged 15-24 in Usisya, training 9 young females and 9 young males as peer educators in partnership with the District Assembly and Increasing condom use among males and females aged 15-24. The latest Peer Education programme in Usisya started towards the end of 2008.

Positive Living Training

Temwa has run a 10 day training course on positive living. This course was given by trained facilitators (themselves HIV positive) and gave the participants the skills and information they need to live longer, healthier lives. Participants learnt about nutrition, basic healthcare for opportunistic and common infections, communication skills and the facts about HIV infection. We hope this information will help to give PLWA the confidence to live openly with HIV.

The formation of the PLWA group has been facilitated and supported by members of NAPHAM (National Association of People Living with HIV & AIDS in Malawi) visiting from Nkhata Bay. The NAPHAM office there provides positive living training and will send two facilitators to carry out this training for Temwa.

HIV/AIDS Educational Film

The film aims to reduce the stigma against those infected with HIV as well as to spread information about the disease itself including the various ways of transmission and methods of treatment. Temwa will be using the DVD as an HIV/AIDS awareness tool and expects to get a very positive response as, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first film of its kind to be made in Chitumbuka. We believe this film will have a very positive impact in Usisya and beyond. It will excite the community to have something in their own language and that they are more likely to attend – and to listen attentively – not just because they will understand the information better, but also because they are tremendously proud of their own culture and identity.

The language is spoken by some 2 million people in total, including many in Zambia and Tanzania and because of this Temwa has begun planning to distribute the DVDs of the film to other organisations that may be interested in using it an HIV/AIDS awareness context.

Mobile VCT Testing